A loud boom accompanied by an earthquake made me jolt upright in bed.  Before it could completely fade there was another crash, this one strong enough to make objects hanging on the walls rattle.  A shadow fell over my house as something enormous eclipsed the light outside, followed by a third cacophony that caused a shockwave with so much power it made my insides tremble.  The tremor from my left was quickly followed by one from the right, then the intense seismic activity ceased.

Multiple earthquakes should normally trigger someone’s survival instincts, but I was used to this by now.  Every day since Fulda shrunk and captured me had started this way, and I did not expect it to stop any time soon.  I was not just her prized possession; I had created her and the entire universe in which she held me prisoner.  In a moment of weakness at seeing my own creation towering over me I had surrendered control of the story to her, and she had taken the reins with relish.  Now she ruled over me like a goddess, though she would never refer to herself as one, and took immense pleasure in looming over her own powerless, bug-sized creator.

“Good morning, pet!” Fulda boomed, her gigantic voice loud enough to rattle my tiny windowpanes.  The poetic justice of a life of servitude at the feet of one of my characters was not lost on me.  She had gone from my intellectual property to my owner, but I could not complain too much.  I had imagined her as my perfect giantess, ruthlessly shrinking and crushing whomever she wanted, and she had done just that.  “Time for you to get up and around!”

Hiding from her inside my miniature house was a fool’s errand.  Though everything in the house looked and worked as it would at full size, the decorations near the ceiling concealed the small gap made by the detachable roof.  If I took too long, she could simply tear the roof off and pluck me out with her fingers.  While she delighted in doing that, and I admittedly got a kick out of it when she did, it was best not to annoy her by making her bend down.

Through the window I saw the gigantic white wall around the sole of Fulda’s Converse bend upward when she twitched her toes impatiently, and I knew I should get moving.  With two bounding steps I crossed the living room and reached the door, then yanked it open.  Her enormous shoe rested just to the side, giving me enough room to step through the door and fully into her presence.  Tiny, exposed, and powerless, I was completely at her mercy, and as I looked up at her titanic frame, I was reminded that I was also hopeless.

 The only thing stopping her from utterly smashing my house was her lack of desire: several copies of it could fit beneath her sole, and there was room on the inside for at least one as well.  Above the rear of the shoe’s great length I saw the bulge of her ankle bones, far enough overhead that it would require a vertical climb several times my insignificant height.  From there stretched her long legs, the smoothed, tan skin glistening in the light, with her well-toned calves giving them a definite curve.  Her thick, powerful thighs were like columns supporting her tremendous body, the skin dimpling where it met the rolled bottoms of her tight black shorts.  A white tank top clung to her like sausage casing, leaving her long, muscular arms exposed and clinging to every curve of her body.  Far above, her shining blue eyes locked onto me the instant I stepped out, and a smug smile tugged at the corner of her full, glossy pink lips while auburn bangs not caught by her braid dangled from her forehead.

“Good morning, Fulda!” I shouted up to her, waving one arm vigorously.  Whether she could hear me was entirely up to her.  Due to my diminutive size, my voice should only reach her waist, and even then as a puny squeak.  As she expanded her control over the story, however, she had figured out how to switch that on and off.  I had been similarly capricious when writing, and she thought it was funny to make me subject to my own changing rules.

“What a funny little squeak you make!” Fulda replied, and the floor creaked beneath her when she shifted her weight back onto her heels.  For now, she had decided she could hear me.  “I must say, you’re the most well-behaved pet I’ve ever had.  Most shrinks make it difficult and run screaming every time they see me.  Then again, they didn’t get shrunk to the size of an ant because they wrote me doing it, which I still think is weird, by the way.”

“What can I say?” I began.  “I like my women tall, and the taller, the better.  Is it any surprise I’d enjoy being shrunken at the feet of my most beautiful creation?”

Fulda laughed, and I clutched my ears to keep the booming sound from making them ring.  “The way you act, it’s like I’m the all-powerful deity here.  Maybe you should bow down in hopes I’ll spare you from my wrath.”  She was in a joking mood today, and I decided to play along.  I got down on my knees and laid prostrate before her, and her continued booming laughter made the floor shake beneath me.  The absurdity of the situation was not lost on either of us as I bowed to her with all possible reverence.

“Okay, get up, that’s enough,” she commanded after several seconds, and I got back to my feet.  “We both know I’m not a goddess, you’re just tiny and powerless.”  We gazed at each other in silence, each of us maintaining a slight grin.  This was the longest she had ever kept someone around, and it was starting to feel like a relationship of sorts despite the obvious stigma of dating someone I made to be my ideal woman.

“So, what sort of game are we playing today?” I asked, hoping she could still hear me.  “Do I have time to get ready?”

Fulda chuckled, making my insides shake just as much as hers.  “We’re always playing,” she said, her rumbling words dripping with arrogance.  “I just thought it’d be fun to get your guard down before relentlessly smashing you, talk to the man beneath my shoe, you know?”

Her laughter grew louder and more intense as she raised her shoe off the ground, keeping the rear firmly planted on the carpet.  She pivoted the foot on her heel until it was directly above me, the vast expanse of brown rubber blocking my view of the rest of her.  The blunted tip of a diamond etched into the rubber hung over my head, leaving just enough room for her toes to land without wrecking the house.  As I looked at the titanic foot poised to squash me, I had to give Fulda credit for getting the drop on me so effortlessly.

Fulda’s sole began descending and made contact with my head as soon as it started moving.  The shoe shoved me to the ground, crumpling my body like a straw wrapper, and pinned me against the carpet.  Her foot alone weighed several tons: there was no way I could budge it, let alone push it off.  However, since she also could not crush me, I was trapped beneath her shoe until she decided to let me go.  If she was feeling playful, it would only be a few minutes before she released me to do something else, and sometimes I would spend all day underneath an enormous foot.

As she pressed her weight down, something new happened: my body gave way to the weight.  Adrenaline shot through my body as it compressed, and I tried to slap on her sole with arms that were firmly pinned to the ground.  “Wait, Fulda!” I shouted, hoping my voice could reach her even through her shoe.  “Stop, you’re actually crushing me!  No, please, don’t ki-“  The space between her sole and the floor became too tight for me to even move my jaw.  My body being compressed by her immense weight did not hurt nearly as much as I expected it would, though I attributed that to mindless panic and adrenaline dulling my nerves.

Fulda set all her weight down, and my body popped under the strain with a horrific squelch.  In the darkness I remained perfectly aware of myself and my surroundings, even cognizant of the multi-ton shoe weighting me down, without missing a moment.  I thought this was the beginning of a trip to some sort of afterlife until Fulda pressed down harder, increasing the pressure on me.  Somehow, even though I had been smashed, I was still alive.

Her shoe lingered for several seconds as though she were ensuring I had been completely flattened before she lifted it away.  When light filled the tiny crevice underneath Fulda’s sole, I saw a distinct red circle amid the brown rubber where it had laid atop me.  Though there were no remains aside from blood, there was no doubt that was me splattered on the bottom of her shoe.  Was I really still alive if I was nothing more than a stain on her floor?  Reflexively I patted myself down, and found that not only was I was not just a puddle, there were no signs of any harm at all.  I could move just as freely as before even though there was a large disc of what should be me stuck to the enormous shoe right over me.

In a brown blur Fulda’s shoe was gone, and I was left looking up at the titaness standing over me.  She turned the shoe sole-up behind her and looked over her shoulder so she could peer down at the results.  “Awesome.”  That single booming word told me a lot without saying much of anything.  Her foot swung back down and slammed into the floor with enough force to make even her wall fixtures vibrate, then she placed her hands on her hips and stared down at me.

“So, my itty-bitty pet,” she began, “I bet you have some questions.”  I did, but I was too stunned to ask any of them.  It was not like before, when her shoe formed around me and my body was intact – she had utterly smashed me, there was no doubt about it.  Parts of my remains had even gotten stuck to her shoe.  By all logic I should be dead, yet here I was, alive and well, without even a bit of pain.

“What’s the matter?  Cat got your tongue?” Fulda teased after a long silence.  The surprise was wearing off, but I still had so many thoughts and questions swimming around my brain that I could not decide which one to start with.  “Fine, then I’ll just monologue while you stare at me.  Yes, I did smash you, and it felt amazing.  Now you’re no different from any other shrink, except that I can crush you again.  And again.  And again.”  A smile spread across her face as she no doubt imagined repeatedly squishing me with various parts of her body.

“I’ve been stepping on you for a while now, but I wasn’t getting the same satisfaction as I did from other shrinks,” Fulda explained.  “I mean, I liked doing it, and it was nice to know you’d always be there for me to step on, but there was something missing.  Then I stepped on a shrink and realized what it was: there was no tactile sensation of you actually going squish, no visceral pop when your body gave out beneath me.  Stepping on you wasn’t too different from, like, stepping on a toy or something, though at least you were a toy that could run.

“So I dove into the metaphysics of this story and looked into why you’re invulnerable.  It turns out there’s no reason you have to be completely impervious to damage aside from your personal vanity, which was a shock to me – just how vain could someone be if their deepest desire is to be both literally and figuratively under someone’s thumb?  So I tinkered with that and made it so you could be crushed just like anyone else.”

It was worse than I thought.  If she was looking at the overarching rules of the story created by my subconscious assumptions and desires, she was on the verge of achieving total and complete dominance of the world.  Not only that, but there were likely things in there even I did not know about, and if she persisted she could come to know me even better than I know myself, or wrest complete narrative control from me.  If that happened, it may be better if she did just kill me.

“So, was I dead?” I finally asked.  Out of all the questions, that seemed the most pressing.

Fulda smirked.  “I knew you’d ask that first.  At no point of being crushed were you dead, either physically or metaphysically.  Lucky for everyone, your immortality is basically hardcoded into the story, like you’re a universal constant, so I couldn’t change that.  I think the world would end or something if you died, like my foot stepping on you was flipping the universe’s switch to off.  Technically, I didn’t even change your invincibility.  I just changed it so your body could be crushed, then automatic processes kick in to instantly restore it.  If anything, I’d say you’re safer and more robust now that I can smash you whenever I want and really feel like I’m smashing someone.”

“Did you know that would work?”  Even if I had been “safe” it still felt like a near-death experience, and it seemed like she was being rather cavalier with my life.

“If it didn’t, it’s not like I’d have a lot of time to regret my choice before fading into non-existence, would I?” Fulda answered, laughing.  “I was as certain as I could be that you’d survive before I tried it out.  I would have asked first, but I wanted it to be a surprise the first time I went all the way with you.  Now that I know I can smash you without consequences, I think I’ll be smashing you a lot more from here on out.”

Even I could not ignore the innuendo.  It sounded like she was equating smashing people to having sex with them, and I wanted to see how far I could go with it.  “Can anyone smash me now, or just you?  Like, if one of the other Gammas came in while you were gone, could they smash me too?”

“They can, but I’d really rather they didn’t,” Fulda replied, a corner of her lips tugging upward.  “I don’t like sharing my shrinks with other women, not even my best friends.  If I’m regularly smashing you, I’d prefer that it just be me that does it rather than declaring open smashing season on you.”

It really sounded like she was not only talking about sex, but proposing we be exclusive.  “What if Jessica smashed me?”  If she was going to couch this in the thinnest layer of innuendo I had ever heard, I was going to see how far I could push it.

“Especially not Jessica.”  She tried to be sweet and teasing about it, but I heard a slight tremble in her booming voice.  “It’s kind of weird you’d even ask that.  Besides, if two sisters are smashing you, it’s only a matter of time before the other one finds out.  Then you’ll have no one at all to smash you.  Am I clear?”

“Crystal.”  It was not so much innuendo as it was a thin plastic sheet thrown over the conversation.  She equated smashing people with having sex, and with the amount of pleasure she got from it I should not have been surprised. 

“Good.”  Fulda stonily glared down at me as though she expected me to respond, but I had nothing to add.  “So!  Do you want to see what else this means?”  Other than apparently locking us in an exclusive relationship where she squished me instead of doing anything sexual, I had no clue.

Rather than explaining anything, Fulda squatted over me until her butt nearly touched the ground.  As I looked up at her face framed between her thighs, she lowered a hand toward me that quickly eclipsed everything else.  While I focused on the long, deep wrinkle running the length of her palm, she reached over me with her thumb and forefinger.  The long, slender digits came together on the back of my collar, and she peeled me out of the carpet she had embedded me in.  Fibers clung to be as she lifted me into the air, though they were ripped away as she effortlessly took me higher.  Although I could not have weighed more than a gram, I would be just as light to her even at full size.

Fulda held me about six inches in front of her face, letting me dangle between her eyes.  They were still cold, but there was a slight tenderness behind them I had not noticed before.  As I swung helplessly from her fingers, she continued to simply gaze at me.  What was going on?  Ever since she had taken control, I had lost control over what happened and could only describe events.  Without access to her internal monologue, however, I was just as confused as any tiny person who might find their gargantuan captor suddenly wanted to do more than merely torment them.

The moment passed without either of us saying anything, and that was likely for the best.  Fulda stood back to her impressive height, and inertia from the sudden ascent kept me from swinging as my feet were strongly drawn toward the ground.  It felt like my stomach dropped to my ankles, and the whole world moving around me heightened my disorientation.  Fortunately, in addition to being intense it was also brief, and by the time I realized she was standing she had already reached her full seven feet.

When Fulda’s long legs locked into place, the sudden halt made me start swinging from her pinched grip again.  Bemusedly, Fulda watched me swing back and forth, the minute movements of her pupils following my tiny body as it swayed in the air.  “So small!  So helpless!” Fulda cooed, then raised a finger in front of me.  “So pathetic.”  With a single, powerful stroke she batted me with a fingertip, pushing me away so hard that I slammed into her fingers on both parts of the ascent.  Whatever feelings she had they were not outweighed by her cruel tendencies as a giantess, and they may have even been feeding into each other.

“Want to know a secret, pet?” Fulda asked, though it took me a moment to recover from the sonic assault of her words.  She lowered me, drawing me toward her mouth, though she stopped just short of slipping me inside.  Her glossy pink lips dominated my view while hot air blasted me from her aquiline nose above, which did little to counter the violent, chaotic swaying resulting from the rush of movement.  “I want you inside me.”  The harsh wind from her whisper cut at my ears, though I was too focused on the parting and curvature of her full lips to notice.  “I ache to feel you deep inside me, my little pet shrink.”

Two loud thuds came from below, and I did not even have to look down to know she was patting her abs.  “Struggling weakly to get out before my duodenum opens and subjects you to a full tour of my digestive system,” she added, smiling wide enough to reveal shining white teeth behind her lips.  “I want to know how you taste, to feel you squirming on your way down my throat after I swallow you whole.  And wouldn’t you know it, you’re just in time for breakfast.”  A terrifying rumble came from deep inside her chest, the cruel laugh she made when she had a shrink right where she wanted them.

“Now hold on, Fulda!” I protested.  “Remember what you told Li when she tried to eat me?  We don’t have time for me to go on a full trip like that!  Besides, do you really want to look for me afterwards?”  I would say just about anything to keep from ending up in Fulda’s lower intestines.  “And if you don’t find me, you won’t be able to smash me anymore!  Come on, you can smash me as much as you want, just don’t eat me!”  I was close enough to her ears that she should be able to hear me regardless, it was just a matter of whether she cared to listen.

“Have a nice trip!” Fulda said, and I shuddered like I never expected I would from those words.  “I’ll see you in a few hours.”  Her lips parted, and she tilted her fingers back to build momentum.  She brought them forward again and released her hold on my collar when I had just passed the lowest point, throwing me toward her mouth in a low arc.  I flew straight between her lips and landed on her tongue without contacting anything else as though she had practiced tossing shrinks into her mouth like this for years.  A low rumble emerged from her throat, making everything inside her mouth tremble, and her lips slowly closed behind me.  I slipped trying to stand on her slick tongue and got a face full of the soft, porous tissue as the light inside was steadily blocked.

Immediately Fulda slammed me into the roof of her mouth, and rumbling laughter came up from her throat.  Her tongue methodically dragged me backwards along her palate, shoving my tiny body hard into the ridges.  I struggled to escape, moving like I was trying to swim through her tongue, but it was several times my size and much stronger than me.  With the soft flesh essentially forming a seal around me, I was a prisoner of her mouth and subject to whatever whims might strike her.

Fulda coiled her tongue back, dropping me from the roof so I slid along the pink tentacle like a slide and landed in her frenulum.  I tried to get up, but there was no footing on the saliva-slick tissue and my feet simply sank deeper in.  She brought her tongue down, its tip landing on me so I was pinned beneath it.  My attempts to move it were hopeless; with how pliable my surroundings were, my hands simply pushed into the tongue while my body got pushed further into the floor.  Mocking me, she wagged her tongue back and forth on top of me, making it clear that I was inferior even to her tongue while driving me downward.

The whole of Fulda’s mouth rumbled with more laughter while I fruitlessly struggled with her tongue.  She lifted it and brought it down again, repeatedly bludgeoning me with the tip while thoroughly soaking me in saliva.  It arced up and dug into the frenulum beside me, then shoved me along the smooth wall of her gums.  I tried in vain to grab onto something, but the slick, wet tissue offered nothing for my fingers to grip and I was sent along several circuits around her mouth while she played with her food.

Her tongue wedged under me and flicked upward, launching me briefly into the air before I landed on hard, smooth bone.  Fulda parted her lips just enough to let a sliver of light in, casting long shadows throughout her mouth.  Even without the light, however, I knew I was lying on one of her molars.  Before I could get up and run she clenched her jaw, squeezing me between it and the row of top teeth.  There was no way I could get out of this: I was trapped between her teeth.

Fulda fully closed her jaw, biting me along my entire body.  Her molars crushed me, and as my body was mangled between them, leaving only my arms uncrushed, something rushed out of me.  She released her jaw, and I was stuck to the bottom molar as it dropped several inches and put me on a slight incline.  My body quickly reformed once the pressure was gone, but I did not have any time to celebrate before it closed again.  My body was painlessly squeezed between her molars, releasing more of what whatever was being produced into her mouth.

Time lost all meaning while Fulda chewed on me like I was a piece of gum.  I did not expect to be crushed any more than I would than if she were stepping on me now, but the repetitive rise and fall of her haw had a way of making the whole process blend together into a single long moment.  It did not hurt, which I was thankful for since the repeated mutilation and reformation of my body would have been agony.  Somehow, there was always more inside me to come out, which promptly slid onto her tongue and down her throat.  Whenever her jaw released I tried to roll off to the side, but she always brought me up to meet the other molars before I could get anywhere.

Even Fulda could not chew on me forever, though.  Her tongue flattened out, and the next time her teeth released me I was dumped onto the wide, slick surface.  I scrambled to get off it, but a powerful stream of saliva threw me off my feet and deposited me atop a firm ring of tensed muscle.  Desperate to escape, I got to my feet and started running to the side through the knee-deep saliva.  Behind me, the gateway to her gullet opened with a sickening schlorp, creating a sudden rush of saliva that knocked me on my back.  In the darkness, I felt myself being drawn toward the gap while I desperately clawed at the smooth tissue on the bottom of her mouth to stop myself.

I slipped into Fulda’s esophagus along with a mouthful of saliva and her throat muscles immediately clenched around me.  They were so tight I could not even move to struggle my way upward, though it was not for lack of trying.  With my arms pinned to my sides all I could do was wiggle, and that was what I did.  I desperately wiggled inside Fulda’s throat, hoping that even if I could not escape on my own, I could make her cough me up.  Neither of those happened, however, and I quickly found myself in freefall toward the bottom of her stomach.

Instead of landing in a pool of acid I found myself resting in a vast field of pink, completely dry, with two pale blue circles far above me.  When my eyes adjusted to the room lighting, I realized those were Fulda’s eyes, and I was resting in her palm with her fingers rising like spires above me.  My clothing was completely free of moisture or even teeth marks: it was like I had never been in her mouth at all.

“Enjoy the ride?” Fulda boomed, light flashing off her glossy lips.  Her tone was so smarmy I knew she was smirking just from her voice.

“You ate me!” I declared, still recovering from the shock of being eaten.  I was sure she had swallowed me, so why was I in her hand now?

“I did and I didn’t,” Fulda replied, her warm voice making my whole body vibrate pleasantly.  “I mean, I did put you in my mouth, and I did swallow you, but there’s nothing in my stomach right now.  All I really did was chew on you like the longest-lasting piece of gum I’ve ever had.”

“But… how?”  As fantastical as shrinking was, I tried to keep my stories realistic, and that meant consequences.  Getting swallowed meant you got eaten, and unless they threw you up it was a one-way street.  As unpleasant as it was, once someone reached the stomach they were dead.

“You get eaten a lot in your stories, probably more than you’d like to admit,” Fulda answered.   “But it always fades to black before anything serious happens, dressed up as death.  So, I fiddled around with some stuff there to change it so once you reached the stomach, you returned to the hand of the person who ate you.  Since I wanted very badly to eat you, and you clearly don’t want to go through digestion even if you come out of it intact, I figured this was the best way of going about it.  Plus, unlike most other shrinks, I get to chew on you for a bit before I swallow.”

“Let me guess, though: the only person who gets to swallow me is you?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?” Fulda replied, her eyes widening while she grinned.  “I don’t think it’s that controversial.  If only I get to smash you, I should be the only person you get to be inside.”

“What if I can’t stop them?”

Fulda gave a small smile and leaned in until her face filled my view, bringing the round tip of her nose down until it almost touched my chest. “Well then, you just come tell me about it,” she purred, “and I’ll see how much like being shrunk and eaten.  You’re my pet shrink, and only I get to do this stuff with you.”  I nodded vigorously, surprised yet pleased to have her so securely in my corner.

Fulda turned, and the world whirled around her face as I looked up at her braided red hair.  She had manipulated the world’s metaphysics again, and I doubted it would be the last time.  In her pursuit to make me into the perfect shrunken pet she was rapidly becoming the most powerful being in the universe, whether she knew it or not.  For now, however, she seemed content to use her ability to manipulate the universe to make games with me more fun, and I hoped she would not realize hew new potential.

Later that day, while I was browsing one of the few sites Fulda allowed me to access, all light coming into the house was blocked.  Moments later a tremendous crash erupted outside the front door, accompanied by a shockwave so powerful it knocked me out of my chair.  I broke the fall with my elbows and landed on my butt.  After a moment feeling sorry for myself, I got up to my knees and turned around.  The window was filled by an enormous, brilliant blue iris now, each tiny fleck and line in the field easily visible to my puny self.  It darted around the room before the pupil landed on me and expanded with a hit of euphoria.

“Hello there, my little pet writer!” Fulda boomed.  Her deep, rumbling voice seemed to come from all around me, as if the world itself was speaking.  “I’ve got a surprise for you!”  The sing-song way in which she said that was undercut by its immense volume.  She was in a playful mood, it seemed, and that rarely boded well for me.

The gigantic eye disappeared in a streak of blue, replaced by the huge bulging wall of white fabric pulled tight over her chest in the distance.  Loud thuds hit both sides of the house, making the roof and ceiling shake in their seating.  A jagged seam appeared along the top of the walls, and with a loud snap it was ripped free.  As Fulda lifted it into the air, pinching it by opposite corners between her thumb and middle finger, more of her face came into view.  It was cast in deep shadows by the overhead light behind her, making her tanned skin look even darker, but I could still easily make out bright eyes and the smug grin on her glistening lips.

Fulda set the tiny house’s roof down beside it with a small clatter, then slammed her elbows onto the table with a loud crash.  This new wave of seismic activity caused my already-weakened knees to buckle, and I fell onto them for support.  She leaned forward until her face was directly over the gap left by the roof so she could look straight down at me, somehow making herself even more imposing.  My gigantic owner and creation stared at me for a moment, the same sly grin plastered on her face, before asking, “Want to see something cool?”

This was awfully close to flirting, her favorite way to lure people into a false sense of security before shrinking them.  There was also no way she was not going to show me: if she was excited about something she was going to do it, especially if it would demonstrate her near-absolute control over me.  “Sure, go ahead!” I shouted up to her.  If I acted enthusiastic about it, I might start feeling that way.

I looked down at the puny man on my desk, shaking in fear at my very presence.  He was so pathetically small, not even an inch tall, and rail thin.  We were exact opposites, yin and yang.  Just as I was big and strong, he was puny and weak.  There was more strength in any of my fingers than in his whole body, and I could grind him to a pulp beneath one if the whim struck me.  It was laughable that someone so pitiful had made me and everything around me, and if he were not uncrushable I would refuse to believe it.

A terrible feeling gripped my body and I trembled in fear.  This was a terrible sign.  Fulda had succeeded in breaking down the last barrier between herself and total control over the world, should she want to seize it.  She was in the narrative, writing it on her own, bending the universe to her will.  If she fully exploited this, she could control thoughts, feelings, and actions of anyone she wanted, even me.  Effectively, she would become omnipotent.

The shrunken man stared up at me, his jaw dropped in awe while his body quivered uncontrollably, and I gazed back at him with a smirk.  He knew what I had done, and what else I could do.  Although he was smaller than many bugs, I could see him with just as much detail as I could a regular-sized person.  His brown hair was disheveled from time spent beneath me, and his dark brown eyes were wide in a mixture of shock and fear.  Despite, or perhaps because of, his growing powerlessness in the face of a beautiful woman big enough to smash him on accident, the crotch of his pants became noticeably tighter.  I figured he had created me as his ideal fetish fulfillment, but his near-constant erection while I towered over him erased any doubt.

“So, how do you like it?” I asked, and the person-like insect clutched his ears for protection.  I smiled, imagining that my soft, seductive voice must sound like a terrifying bellow to him, and somehow his boner got bigger.  “It certainly seems to me like you enjoyed it.”

My grip on reality slipped further as Fulda forced her way further into the seams, strengthening her hold.  This was a nightmare scenario for any writer who got dragged into their own world and taken prisoner, and for some reason it gave me a raging hard-on.  I should have been too afraid to do anything but breathe and look for a way out, and I realized that Fulda had simply decided I had one.  She even had control of my bodily functions now.

“Yeah, that’s amazing!” the tiny man answered, his voice little more than a small, high-pitched squeak.  Were he much further away from my face, I would not even be able to hear him.  The corners of my mouth tugged outward in amusement at how he even sounded puny.  “Do it some more!”

My lips moved on their own volition, forced to make someone else’s words.  I did not think it was amazing, and I certainly did not want her to keep doing it.

“What’s the matter, my puny pet shrink?” I asked with a smirk.  “Not a fan of an omnipotent being putting words in your mouth, making you do things you don’t really want to?  That’s too bad, because the way I see it, turnabout is fair play.  You’ve been making me and my friends say and do things for years, and now it’s my turn.”

I had to do something, there was no way –

The shrunken man got back to his feet, finally overcoming the abject terror my immense size inspired in him.  He began backing away toward his bedroom, and I easily followed his tiny movement by with my eyes.  When he crossed the threshold, however, he looked around in confusion when he remembered I had designed the house with only one exit.  Though he had created the universe, he still succumbed to the typical shrink stupidity and trapped himself, putting him at the mercy of my whims.

I found myself in my bedroom, though I knew there was no way out of it.  There was no way out of this whole situation.  Fulda’s power was inescapable, and no matter where I was or ran I would be subject to it.

Realizing his mistake, the shrink ran for the front door.  His puny legs moved quickly, but could only carry him a few inches per second – less than the length of my index finger.  I watched him go, smiling at his futile attempts to get away from me.  No matter where he went, he would always be within my reach.

The shrunken man crossed the threshold of his tiny model house and I decided to lay down the law.  I slammed a hand onto the desk beside him, spreading my thumb so it would form a barrier even if he kept going.  My slap was powerful enough to knock him down, and he did a somersault before sliding to a stop on his back.  While he laid there in confusion, I wondered what his ultimate plan was.  He was trapped on the desk, and even if he somehow got down from it, the towel I had shoved under the door would keep him from getting away.  There was literally nowhere for him to run.

Though I would never admit it, I found shrinks kind of cute.  They were so small and helpless, and desperate to try anything to get out of their impossible situation no matter how stupid an idea it was.  Most of them ran from me and the other Gammas, though.  Something about suddenly being tiny and seeing us as gigantic monsters must have triggered something in them, and no matter how hard they had been trying to get into my pants earlier, they suddenly changed their minds once they could literally get into my pants.  Were they not so fun to crush, I may have stopped making them years ago.

There was something different about this shrink, though.  He loved gigantic women – me as a gigantic woman in particular – and only ran to keep the games interesting.  It made sense: why else would he have made an entire sorority of women who could shrink people if he did not himself want to be shrunk by one of them?  My preferences seemed to coincide with his, as well.  At seven feet tall, it was difficult to find a man who was not shorter than me, but I seemed to prefer the shortest men, and there were no men naturally as short as a shrink.  As I looked at him, I realized he even bore a close resemblance to a lot of my exes, possibly him inserting himself into the story as the man who gets shrunk.

Wait.  Did I want to bang my teensy pet writer?  Though I did not in any way revere him, it still seemed somehow blasphemous to fuck my literal creator.  Then again, he was the one who had given me these thoughts, preferences, and desires, so it seemed natural to act on them.  Then again, if I did, would I only be acting as a subject to how he programmed me?  How much of me was me, how much came from how he made me act, and how much had developed on its own?  Unless I did a complete overhaul of everything, how could I be sure I was truly acting as an individual expressing their free will to shape the world around them?

Fuck that and the indecisiveness growing from it.  I knew what I wanted even if it was what had been imposed on me, and I was going to get it.

Fulda lifted the hand that had wrapped halfway around me and moved it slightly to the side so it was directly over me.  The vast platform of peach flesh blocked out everything else, and the deep creases running across the broad expanse commanded my attention.  They deepened when her hand folded inward, and her thumb and forefinger swung toward me.  Stuck on her desk and immobilized, there was nowhere for me to go.  She had complete dominion over me, and there could be no escape from her wall-sized fingertips.

I plucked the little man off my desk, reveling in another chance to demonstrate my abject superiority over him.  Slowly I lifted him to my face, letting his trepidation build as he was carried away from the desk.  He struggled weakly against my grip, though we both knew there was no way he could free himself from being pinched between my digits.  As he squirmed in my grip, I could not help but find it hot.  Here was a man I had made completely subject to me through sheer size and force of will, only able to wiggle like a worm in a vain attempt to get free.

I held him about six inches from my face so I could properly stare down at him without crossing my eyes.  He was so tiny that just the tips of my fingers completely covered his body, leaving only his pinprick of a head exposed.  His head turned back and forth as he tried to decide which eye to focus on, and I simply stared down at him.  Even if he could stop what was about to happen, he would not.  After all, I was his perfect woman doing exactly what he wanted.

“You know, you’re not that bad looking for a shrink,” I said, blasting my tiny creator with a wall of wind and sound from my mouth.  “And I like having you around.  You might even say that I… have a crush on you.”  My cheeks warmed when I smiled at my double entendre, and when his useless efforts to escape my grasp intensified, I knew he understood it.

His weak struggles barely pushed against my thumb, and I knew he would not be getting free.  A tiny squeak escaped from him when I squatted, almost lost in the sound of the floor creaking as I shifted my weight.  I briefly stopped when I could squat no further, my butt nearly touching the ground with my heels resting on the floor, and saw him reeling in my grasp.  All it would take was one little pinch to squish him, but that would be no fun.  My hand rushed down to the carpet, and I made sure he was situated atop the fibers before opening my fingers to let him go.  When I was sure he would not go anywhere, I stood back up and stared down at him, a barely noticeable blemish in the carpet between my shoes.

Though I should have been accustomed to it by now, I was still enraptured every time I saw Fulda towering over me.  Her gargantuan feet, large enough to crush whole buildings beneath them, loomed closest to me, with her long, powerful legs stretching into the sky, their freshly-shaved skin glistening in the light.  Her fit, toned body loomed far above, reaching taller than many skyscrapers, and the color of her sky-blue eyes matched their elevation.  She made me feel absolutely insignificant, as though I were a mere insect compared to her, as I stared up at her titanic body.  While my initial arousal was based on her say so, it did not diminish in the least as her gigantic form stood astride my tiny self on the ground.

I watched the dust mite of a man for several seconds, waiting for him to make some move to escape, but he never did.  He was so enamored with gigantic women that any sense of self-preservation had gone right out of his head.  As much as I loved simply having him at my feet, however, I needed to go through with what he wanted – what we both wanted.  Smirking, I loved my shoe off the ground and moved it over him while he reached a hand into his pants.

Fulda’s shoe hovered directly o-

The pathetic little man started stroking his dick as I made it clear I was going to smash him.  I lowered my foot toward him, and as my sole drew closer his strokes became faster and more intense.  It was unusual to have a shrink who was into the idea of shrinking, let alone one who could jerk off even while my foot descended to squish him, but if anyone could manage it, it was him.  He had written so many stories about me shrinking and smashing people that it must have grown from a deep-seated desire to be shrunk and smashed himself.

My foot landed on the ground, though I did not press down just yet.  As expected, his masturbation reached a pitch when my sole rested atop him and we both knew I could squish him at any time.  I waited until he was on the verge of climax, then leaned forward onto him.  His arm was pushed up by my foot pressing down on him, causing him to climax.  He came just as my shoe crushed him, his body giving way with a satisfying pop when it burst beneath my weight.  It was difficult to line up, but I had finally made him cum by stepping on him.

However, I was not satisfied with just crushing him.  I leaned onto the foot atop him, making the floorboards creak beneath my weight, and lifted my heel so I could press down harder.  When I was certain my shrunken creator had been flattened, I began grinding my foot back and forth, driving him further into the carpet.  It was a clear demonstration of my sheer dominance over him, and each time my foot changed direction was an affirmation of my indisputable control.

It took some time for me to grow tired of making him as flat as possible, but at some point I knew he would squish no more.  After one final push onto him I withdrew my foot and surveyed the carnage left behind by his body being pulverized.  Not much remained of him: a small splotch the size of a quarter, most of which had been transferred onto my sole.  As I watched his body reform, ready for another round of punishment, I felt a twinge of warmth below my waist.  As erotic as he thought it was to be stepped on, I thought it was just as erotic to step on a shrink.  Now, however, I had a repeat victim.

He laid in his own simulated remains at my feet, still trying to come to grasps with what had happened.  It would be a few seconds before he could even move on his own, and I needed to capitalize on that.  I bent down and lowered a hand toward him, pinching him by the legs.  Careful not to tear anything, I peeled him out from the carpet and let him dangle from my fingers as I stood.  Looking at the puny man hanging from beneath my fingers, I felt a sudden rush of warmth as blood rushed to my crotch.  Now that he had gotten his, it was time for me to get mine.

Fulda opened her fingers and gravity took hold, pulling me toward –

My tiny pet landed in the middle of my palm, where he bounced off the taut flesh and landed on his back in the shadow of my fingers.

I looked up and saw Fulda’s face looming over me, her beauty dominating –

His face was a mixture of terror and joy as he gazed upon my gigantic features, and he seemed to freeze up.  My fingers converging toward him broke him out of it, however, and the typical shrink panic set in.  He got to his feet and started running around, trying to find some way off, but there was no way out for him without leaping back to the floor.  In desperation he looked up to me for succor, only to be met with silence and a smile.  I leaned in close, making him feel trapped between a pair of enormous eyes as my fingers curled over him.

He spun around and was met by the sight of my fingers towering over him like obelisks.  His minuscule form did not even reach the bottom knuckle on any of them.   A tiny squeak of a scream just reached my ears, and my cheeks flushed with arousal.  The more scared he was, the hotter I got.  My fingers closed around him, forming a loose cage, and between them I saw him throw up is arms in a vain gesture of protection.  Warmth filled all seven feet of my body, and my breaths became quick and shallow when my fingers formed a tight wall around him.

I clenched my fingers into an ever-tighter fist, and felt his tiny body get pressed against my palm, held in place by a single fingertip.  He flailed against my hand, trying to get free, and his futile struggles caused moisture to begin pouring into my panties.  With a slight adjustment I made him hold still, and the sense of complete dominance made the moisture flow more strongly.  All it would take now was one little push.

I squeezed, and the puny man in my fist popped like a berry.  The instant my fingers squished him a font of warmth ran down my legs, and my knees weakened.  My crotch was drenched to the point that a dark spot even appeared on the outside of my shorts.  As I pressed down with my fingers hard enough the tips turned white, I had to sit down to keep from falling.  It was the most intense series of orgasms I ever felt, and the longer I crushed him, the longer they would continue.  Just the thought of my creator trapped in my hand getting crushed into an unrecognizable mess just like every other shrink he had sent to meet a similar fate with me filled me with an unmatched ecstasy.

Unfortunately, the good times had to come to an end.  I released him from my tight grip and dragged my hand along the corner of my desk, scraping him off my palm.  As I slouched in my chair he got back to his feet, unsteady but no worse for the wear.  He staggered around, trying to get his bearings after being repeatedly squeezed to a pulp, while I stared at him in a happy daze.  At some point, I needed to go change my pants.

Fulda looked at me from a distance, sitting so low in the chair her back was on the seat.  Her lips were pulled tight in a persistent grin, and her pupils were so dilated there was barely any of her brilliant blue irises visible.  There was little doubt in my mind what had happened, and it dispelled any doubts about why she equated smashing people with sex.  As she sat there, limp and grinning with the occasional booming chuckle, I headed inside the house to take a shower, and I suspected she would be doing the same soon, too.

I watched the tiny man walk back into his tiny house, still smiling from the euphoria coursing through my body.  Part of me wanted to put my feet up on the desk and smash the tiny house with him inside, but I was not sure if my body could take much more.  For now, I simply lingered in the chair, looking down at the miniscule house and imagining it beneath my shoe.

I gently pushed the door open and slipped through it, ducking to avoid banging my head against the frame.  Crouching lower, I crept across the room to the desk where my shrunken man-pet lived, hoping to get the drop on him.  As a seven-foot tower of a woman, it was difficult to keep the floor from creaking under my over two hundred pounds of muscle.  Through absolute control of my perfect body and long, slow steps, however, I made it several steps without a single sound.

Though he was too puny to see from the doorway, I spied my favorite shrink standing in the open atop the desk.  I had no idea what he did while I was out – long for me to come back?  Probably.  For the past few weeks, in preparation for just this moment, I had been keeping odd hours, changing up my schedule, and keeping him in the dark about the passage of time.  If I had played my cards right, by now he should have no idea what time or day it was, and ought to expect me to be gone for a full day of classes even though it was Saturday.

My shadow engulfed the human dust mite, and he spun around in shock.  His body went rigid, and he craned his neck back to look up at me.  I smiled as terror gripped him, freezing him in place and giving him a fear boner.  Before he could come to his senses, I raised a hand to my shoulder and pressed all my fingers together, making my intentions clear.  Tiny squeaks came from my desk, only audible because of the absolute silence in the Gamma house, and I brought my hand down on top of him in a devastating slap.

SPLAT

His body flattened under my palm, spreading in a wet, gooey mess.  I pressed my hand down harder and twisted it, mashing him even further while chuckling at my absolute dominance over him.  He was nothing compared to me, and I reminded him of that every time smashed him, looked down at him, or even stood in front of him.  It had only taken a couple weeks to completely turn the tables, and now he was completely under my control.  While he might deny it, I knew this arrangement suited both of us best.

I lifted my hand and got ready to mock him once he regained his form, but there was no trace of him on the desk.  A small wet spot remained in my palm, so I turned it over to investigate.  There, in the middle of a dark red spot, was his smashed body.  He did not look like most shrinks did after getting crushed – this was more like a cartoon character had an anvil fall on them.  With all the tinkering I had been doing to reality lately, I might have caused a delay to his reconstitution, or turned it off entirely.

As much as the idea of a squished yet fully conscious shrink amused me, I did not have time to wait for him to come back.  Unlike shrinks, big people like me had things to do.  I brushed my hand against my shorts, scraping the tiny, disgusting mess onto the black fabric, and walked over to my bed.  Grabbing my phone from the nightstand, I headed back out the door to head downstairs.  Saturdays meant a party for the Gammas.

I recovered while Fulda was in mid-stride, the most inopportune time.  With the moisture gone I came unstuck from Fulda’s shorts and began plummeting toward the carpet.  Thinking quickly, I dragged my fingers along the rough fabric until my arms snagged on the ridge of rolled-up material at the bottom.  The sudden arrest of my fall hurt, wrenching my shoulders in their sockets, but it was less painful than hitting the ground.  Immediately I began kicking my feet against her leg, trying to scramble up and take refuge in the narrow bastion of cotton.

It was not to be.  Before I could make any progress Fulda’s heel hit the ground, sending a powerful tremor up the length of her leg.  My feet slipped of the rough interior fabric, leaving me hanging from the ledge, then her toes swung down.  Another wave of vibrations surged up her leg and the only thing to absorb it was my fingers.  The power of her step sapped the strength from them, and one hand completely slipped away.  I was left tenuously dangling from her shorts by one arm, and she did not look to be stopping soon.

While her other leg moved forward I hoped to regain my hold, but it was not to be.  It would take longer than a second for strength to return to my arms, and there were subtle motions in her gait that were impossible to notice for someone not attached to her leg.  When it straightened and began moving forward again, I knew I had to act fast.  As her foot reached its apex, I made one more lunge to grasp her shorts with my free hand, but it was too weak to grab anything.  As her shoe descended toward the floor, the only thing keeping me on her leg was four enervated fingers.

Fulda seemed to miss the floor – it was worse than I expected.  Her foot slammed onto the step, and the jolt from the sudden stop wrenched my fingers free of her shorts.  The tiny bit of forward momentum carried me toward the front of her leg, and as I plummeted along the smooth surface my course changed to drop me on top of her shoe.  I landed among the tightly-stitched white cotton of her laces, the knot tied in them keeping me from tumbling down the rest of her shoe.  A black and white streak raced past, followed by a calamitous boom and a teeth-rattling earthquake.

Before I could burrow beneath Fulda’s shoelaces, the foot I was resting on began moving.  Her heel kicked up, flinging me into the air, and my weakened fingers slipped away when I tried to snag a thread.  Airborne, I flipped head over heels away from her, flailing wildly as I tumbled toward the ground.  Due to the stairs’ incline, what would have normally been a six-inch drop was now a dozen feet with nothing to slow me on the way down.

I crashed into the hard wood of the Gamma house hallway and slid several inches on my back.  The landing hurt, and I would definitely be feeling it for several days, but luckily nothing was broken.  However, while I could move my extremities, I was not yet strong enough to stand back up.  As I looked up at my titanic creator and captor lumbering down the stairs toward me, I realized my predicament was only getting worse.

The thud of Fulda’s feet on each step was like a countdown, getting louder and more intense the closer she got to the bottom.  I tried to get out of her path, but each time I tried to get my feet beneath me they simply slid away, unable to support my weight.  Trapped in place, I was forced to watch as she inexorably drew closer one step at a time.

Fulda reached the bottom of the stairs, and with her last step a gargantuan Converse was directly over me.  “Fulda, wait!” I cried out, though I knew she could not hear me.  The brown rubber sole sped toward me, quickly blocking everything from my view except a single diamond etched into the rubber.  Her foot landed directly atop me, and I felt intense pressure as my body was squished beneath several hundred tons of woman.

For once, Fulda’s foot did not linger.  In time with the rest of her gait, Fulda’s foot lifted off the ground, and I found myself stuck to the sole of her shoe.  Wind ripped at me as her foot moved through the air, finally peeling me off once her foot reached its apex.  I fell back to the floor, rolling when I landed, and my body recovered just in time to absorb the shockwave from her foot hitting the ground.  At least this time I was not beneath it.

Fulda disappeared around a corner, and I finally had some time to gather my strength and consider my options.  My first priority, of course, was getting Fulda to notice me again.  She may be cruel and capricious, but she at least regarded me as a pet while the other Gammas thought of me as a plaything.  Escape from the sorority house was impossible: I knew for a fact that only one person had managed it before, and that was due to someone who no longer lived here.  Besides, I was not going to pass up a chance to live at the feet of my ideal woman.

I finally felt strong enough to get back to my feet, just in time for a series of increasingly powerful earthquakes to wrack my body.  Turning towards the source, I saw Fulda’s ginormous feet trudging toward me, slapping the kitchen tile each time her toes slammed down.  Remembering my primary goal, I began jumping up and down while waving my arms and shouting in a desperate bid to get her attention.  My eyes gazed up her gargantuan body, and to my dismay I saw the fingers of one hand curled around a red Solo cup, the others around her phone, her eyes intensely focused on the latter.  Even though she was almost on top of me, there was no way she would notice me.

A tremor drew my attention back to my level, and I was met by a vast sprawl of brown rubber as her shoe stretched dozens of feet into the air.  I braced myself to be squashed again, but her foot fell just short of landing on me, making my knees falter from being so close to a ruinous earthquake.  My balance gone, I fell against the white rubber toe of her Converse, and heard the canvas wrinkling as she got ready to take another step.  Unable to separate myself from the gigantic shoe, I was carried into the air along with it when she lifted it to take a step.

My body formed around the curved surface, the movement itself pressing me against the rubber.  The whole world was a blur while her shoe moved, and I turned my focus to her laces to keep from getting dizzy.  It helped a little, but did not lessen the gut punch when her heel slammed onto the carpet below me.  Her toes swung down, slapping the rest of her sole against the carpet, and I was dislodged from the front of her shoe.  Thankfully I was spared the impact of another earthquake, though that was hardly a blessing as I bounced and rolled along the carpet.

Fulda stepped over me, completely oblivious to my presence, and walked toward the huge armchair at the end of the coffee table.  I was right back where I had been just a few seconds ago.  Her footfalls had turned my knees to rubber again, and it would be even more difficult to get my footing back on carpet.  With all I had written about it, I knew how difficult it would be to traverse carpet if I had to push my way through the fibers.  If that were not bad enough, it would be even harder to get Fulda’s attention while technically inside the floor.

While I waited for the strength to move again, I turned my attention toward Fulda.  She sank into the chair, her long legs actually tilting upwards despite her rigid back, and I knew this was as comfortable as she got.  The phone looked like a toy in her hand as her thumb raced across the screen, her fingers curling around the top.  Fulda hit send on whatever message she was typing out, then set the phone down in her lap.  Seconds later, doors began opening upstairs, and my situation somehow became even worse.  Lying helpless at the main entrance into the living room, I would be unable to get out of the way of the gigantic feet coming my way.

I tried forcing myself to stand in hopes my legs would be able to bear the weight, but I simply toppled onto my back again.  Thundering footfalls down the stairs signified the approach of several gigantic women, and I knew I was stuck.  The first of them reached the ground floor, sending out a shockwave that carried through the carpet and got absorbed by my body, resetting whatever tiny amount of recovery I had made.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a house-sized white hi-top Converse plant itself on the hard wood floor while its partner swung into the kitchen, the harbinger of what was to come.

A veritable parade of gargantuan feet followed, filing into the kitchen so the giantesses could make drinks before joining the party.  My legs still useless, I resorted to one final desperate measure to avoid being trampled repeatedly.  “Fulda, help me!” I cried out, hoping against all likelihood she could hear me.  “I’m on the floor by the doorway!  Please, come get me before the other Gammas crush me!”  Nothing.  The titanic redhead simply leaned back in her chair and took a long sip of her drink before looking back to her phone.

Seismic shockwaves grew in intensity, and I knew the troupe of titanesses was coming back my way.  First up was the towering blond Helen, second only to Fulda in physique.  In some ways she had taken definite fashion cues from Fulda, favoring Converse sneakers and outfits which revealed as much of her powerful body as possible.  She favored white instead of black, however, and had taken to wearing cut-off acid washed denim skirts since her confrontation with me.  All those thoughts went out the window, however, when her brown rubber sole streaked into position over me, and all I could think about was the likelihood of it coming down on top of me.

Fortunately, she stepped right over me, her heel landing just past my feet, resulting in a seismic event of unthinkable ferocity when the rest of her foot swung down.  Just because she had missed me did not mean I was in the clear, however.  After Helen came another monolithic blond and Fulda’s younger sister, Jessica.  Aside from the hair color, she was the spitting image of her sister.  As a middle child she craved attention, and my gaze was subconsciously drawn toward her dark blue dress as it surged toward me one long stride at a time.  When I could see her thighs moving, I completely expected to be underneath her shoe with the next step.

Again, by sheer chance she missed me.  The floor trembled under the weight of her shoe slapping down, and for a moment all I could see was the white rubber toe of her Converse, but it had fallen just short.  When her tremendous blue shoe stepped over me I saw that next in line to unknowingly threaten me was Jackie, the pastel princess.  From her pink hair to her light blue silk dress, she seemed intent to give the impression that she was a gigantic piece of candy.  Her white stockings were just a few shades lighter than her skin, and she was so skinny the nylon gave her legs the little definition they had.  As her black flats surged toward me, however, I knew that her weight relative to normal-sized people hardly mattered.  If one ended up atop me, I would be smashed flat as surely as any insect.

Jackie’s shiny black flat landed beside me, generating a quake that made my bones shake in my joints but thankfully leaving me unsquished.  As she passed over me, I saw the last long-term Gamma step over the threshold.  Though she was Chinese, Li knew that many Americans could not tell the difference, and habitually dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl to attract hapless victims.  Out of all the Gammas, she was undoubtedly the cruelest, and sought to inflict the most fear and suffering on her victims before she devoured them.  As her gigantic brown loafers came toward me, I hoped that she of all people would walk by me without incident.

Though I was ostensibly trapped in my own fantasy, very few of my wishes came true.  The ground shuddered when her foot set down, and the vast smooth black platform of her heel stretched above me, the rest of her sole reaching far into the distance above my head.  “Li, no!” I shouted, and it was all I could manage before her foot came crashing down.  Her heel set down atop me, almost measured so I was in the exact middle, and my body compressed beneath her immense weight.  The intense pressure crushed my body flat, and I even heard the visceral crunch when my bones gave way beneath her heel.

When Li took her next step, I was still stuck to her shoe.  Though my body recovered quickly it did not drop free, and the force of her foot itself descending kept me pinned firmly against her shoe.  Even when it hit the ground again I was not knocked free, instead subjected to a rapid descent when her heel forced me back to the ground.  Li squished me again with each step, subjecting me to a cycle of smashing and recovery that was only broken when she finally came to a stop with her foot firmly pressing down on me.

Several minutes passed while Li’s heel kept me flattened while gigantic muffled voices came at me from every direction.  The solid material of her sole dissipated the sound enough that I could not understand a word by the time it reached me, but I was very aware of a conversation going on around me.  With each second that passed, another bit of conversation passed me by, and I wished Li would kick her feet up for a moment.  While I wanted some relief from being perpetually flattened, I was also interested in what they were talking about.

At last, Li’s heel lifted, freeing me from the prison beneath her foot.  For a moment my body lingered on her sole, stuck there by inertia and the collection of whatever came out of me when I was smashed.  Finally, however, her heel lingered in the air long enough for me to drop away from it and land amid the carpet fibers.  Desperately I crawled away, hoping to get clear of her foot before she brought it back down again, always conscious that I was a split second away from getting squashed again.

“You know, I’m not really sure what to make of it,” came a terrifyingly deep voice from above.  I owed my freedom to Li’s unconscious movements while speaking, it seemed, and I desperately clawed my way through the carpet so as to not squander the opportunity.  She twisted her toes against the carpet and I crawled faster, not wanting to wind up beneath her heel again.  “I’ve never gotten a C before!”

“Have you considered making her shrink-sized until she reconsiders the grade?” asked someone out of view.  I was not very familiar with their voices at this size, but I was pretty sure it was Jessica who asked that question.

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Li answered, knocking me prone when her voice struck me.  “It seems a little extreme for this case though, doesn’t it?  I mean, it’s not like I’m failing or anything.  Besides, shrinking women takes so much more effort I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

“No, you’re right,” replied a soft, sympathetic voice in the distance, which I could only imagine was Jackie.  I capitalized on the brief reprieve to continue my escape from beneath Li’s shoe in hopes I could avoid getting stepped on for the near future.  “It was just a first draft, so you should be able to rewrite it for full credit.  Just include a couple more sources and have me proofread it, and you’re guaranteed to get an A.”  A beat passed while I gripped a carpet fiber with both hands and pulled myself toward it and she added, “Besides, you’re right.  Shrinking other women just isn’t worth it, no mater how old and shriveled they are.”

“Yeah, okay!”  The tremendous rumbling of Li’s voice was only topped by her setting her heel down, though it landed just behind me.  It may have been by sheer luck, but I had avoided getting smashed by Li again.  “Are you sure you don’t mind, though?  It’s, like, 20 pages, and they’re all fairly technical.”

“Don’t worry about it!” Jackie responded.  “First of all, your paper was supposed to be 15 pages from what you told me, so there has to be something there to cut.  Second of all, you used a lot of tables, right?  I’m sure that we can at least collapse them to make them fit in the format.  And lastly, we need you as a Gamma, and didn’t your parents say they’d stop paying your dues if you went below a B in any class?”

“Yeah, you should listen to her.”  Was that Helen admitting some slight point of weakness?  “She brought me from a D to a B in my freshman year, so she should be able to do better now.  Plus, we’re all Gammas, right?  You can trust us over some rando at the writing center.” 

Li’s heel ground against the floor, and I heard carpet crunching beneath her weight.  While they conspired to improve her grades I was fighting for my life.  With great difficulty I turned myself around using only my arms, then gripped the corner of her sole with my hands.  With a surge of strength I pulled myself up until I stood leaning against her shoe, the least I could manage in the face of a series of giantesses.  Getting Fulda’s attention was impossible, but I could not remain on the floor.  No matter how unlikely it was, one of them might notice my desperate attempts to get noticed.

“Hey, Li!” I shouted, waving one arm desperately to generate interest.  “I’m down here, by your shoe!  Come down and get me!”  I got the same response I expected.  The brown leather of Li’s shoe alone was several dozen feet tall, presenting me with a tremendous obstacle to even reach her ankle.  From there, her tight black socks clung tightly to her skin, giving her calves an unbelievable amount of definition until they reached her knees several hundred feet above me.  From there, it was a brief view of her bare, smooth skin to her plaid, pleated skirt draped over her legs like a tent.  As I looked up her white linen shirt toward her dark eyes, she showed absolutely no signs she had heard me, ignoring me entirely to focus on her sorority sisters.

The conversation continued, with none of the gigantic women acknowledging my presence at Li’s heel.  “Yeah, I’ll send it to you tomorrow,” Li said as I swung one leg onto the low ridge created by her sole.  “You’re sure you don’t mind, though?  It’ll be a lot of work and might eat up your entire today.”  I reflected on how appropriate her words were as I dragged myself onto her shoe so I could stand on the black rubber ledge.

“Really, don’t worry about it!” Jackie replied as I inched my way over to the nearest seam in Li’s shoes.  “What’s the point of being in a sorority if you can’t ask your sisters for help every now and then?  If you really feel that it’s a burden, though, you can think of it as a favor you can pay back later.  I’m sure I can think of something you can do for me.”  I grabbed the exterior stitching on Li’s loafer and prepared myself for my ascent up the great brown wall.

“This isn’t going to be like when you made us play D&D for a whole night because you walked on a treadmill for an hour, is it?”  Weird; I had not written that story yet, but Li already knew what happened.  There was no time to reflect on that now, however.  My arms started shaking under my own weight, and I scrambled to reach the top of Li’s shoe.

“Come on, you can admit you had fun!” Jackie countered.  “At the very least, you got to eat a shrink.”  I leaned against Li’s ankle, taking a moment to gather my strength while they bantered far above me.  “I’ll think of some way you can repay me, and I promise that it won’t involve anything nerdy.  Is that fair?”  My long climb up Li’s sock had begun, and I could not care less about their negotiations while I was draped over her ankle bone.

“As long as I can decide what’s too nerdy, fine,” Li agreed, and I continued my way up her calf.  “Maybe it’ll depend on what grade you get me.”

“For a favor from you,” Jackie paused to chuckle, “I’ll change your grade on the server if I have to.”  My inverse climb along Li’s calf was starting to take its toll on me.  During my time as Fulda’s prisoner, I had gotten ample practice with climbing, but this was different.  The tight knit black sock should have been easier to climb than Fulda’s smoothly shaven skin, but my strength had been sapped by a continuous series of earthquakes generated by these tremendous women.  At this rate, it would be a wonder if I made it to her knee.

Li’s calf suddenly twitched when her skin reflexively registered of my presence.  The black obelisk I clung to rotated slightly, throwing my feet into the air, and I desperately clenched my grip to maintain my hold.  I looked up to see if I had been caught, and beyond the great expanse of Li’s svelte thigh I saw her face, with two black eyes staring down at me.  The moment she noticed me, her body tilted to the side, and her arm started swinging toward me.  With her long fingers outstretched, it was a certainty Li was going to swat me like a fly.

Her hand stopped just short of impacting me, and I was spared the humiliation of being smushed like a common bug a second time in an hour.  Li’s fingers slowly moved away, but before I could be thankful for the intercession, I saw her eyes widen.  She recognized me, or at least what I was.  I was not sure whether it would be better for her to mistake me for a common shrink, or to recognize me as the inexplicably tiny person who had created her.

Without saying a word, she curled her index finger back and placed it flat against her sock, pressing slightly into her muscle.  Li smirked cruelly, and I had just enough time to register the expression before her finger swept down.  It struck me and immediately overwhelmed what little strength I had left, tearing my fingers from amid the threads of her sock.  Between gravity and the force of her flick it was a quick trip to the ground, and I ended up slightly embedded in the carpet.

Li turned to face me head-on, the vast black sole of her shoe swinging over me and striking the ground hard enough to create a new tremor.  Her movements were enough to attract the attention of the other giantesses, who quickly recognized a helpless shrink lying on the ground.  They moved to circle around me, and their footfalls subjected me to a never-ending series of quakes that leeched what little strength I had left.  With one last glance I looked at Fulda, who was still firmly engrossed in her phone and drink.  If she had truly become omniscient in this universe, she had willingly made herself ignorant of my struggles.

With four titanesses gazing down at me, I felt even smaller and more pathetic than usual.  I had created their universe, and now they were mine.  Unable to do anything else, I stared up at them, and found I had to focus on each of them in turn.  Helen looked stern, her face a mask of steel while she peered down at me, while Jackie grinned broadly, her toes twitching while she imagined me beneath them.  Jessica clearly had to suppress a laugh when she looked at me, still finding my size funny, and Li set her hands on her hips.  As she looked at me with her predatory gaze, I remembered her desire to finally chase a shrink around with her feet.  It was only fitting, I supposed, for me to be that shrink.

My legs were too weak for me to stand on them, but I soon realized I did not just feel smaller.  The quartet of giantesses was growing, which most likely meant I was getting smaller.  My whole body laid out was small enough to fit atop a single carpet fiber, making my inability to escape irrelevant.  Each fiber making up the carpet was its own platform now, and I would have to leap between them if I wanted to get anywhere.

Despite my minuscule size, Li did not lose track of me.  She raised her right leg until her thigh was parallel to the ground, bringing her ginormous foot directly over me.  It lingered there for a moment, building trepidation, while I realized the foot alone was over a thousand feet long.  Even at this distance, every small divot in its pitted surface was visible.  Li was a skyscraper all her own, and the others were just waiting for their chance.

Li’s shoe raced down, closing the distance to me in an instant.  I was astounded by its speed; it had moved several thousand feet faster than I could blink.  Aside from my surprise, however, there was time for little else before Li’s foot squashed me into nothing.  As soon as she relented, I knew, the others would have their chance to stomp on me as well, and I accepted that my lot for now was to be repeatedly stepped on.

I hit save on the document and leaned back in my chair with a self-satisfied smile.  If he had been a god, then I was a goddess, with absolute control over the universe in which I lived.  Not only could I make him do whatever I wanted, but I could make anyone in the world do whatever I wanted to him.  My so-called god was weak and powerless, and I had supplanted him.  The only thing keeping me from truly messing with reality was my concern for the consequences – namely, that someone might catch on.

I looked toward the tiny house my pet god lived in.  It seemed appropriate – he was a god who lived in a house the size of my thumb at the beck and call of a much more powerful goddess.  As I left things, he was consigned to get stepped on by my sorority sisters until I felt the need to intervene.  Since he had created us to step on or eat people, I felt it was an appropriate way for him to spend some time.

I sure would miss him, though.  It may have been the conditioning he gave me, but there was something about shrinks I found irresistible.  Besides, why should I let other people step on him when I could?  After all, I had promised him that our squisher-squishee relationship was exclusive, and as a burgeoning goddess I needed to honor my word.  With a thought I willed him back into the puny house, freeing him from being smashed by Li until I made her get bored of it.

My view changed from the bottom of Li’s sole to the dark interior of my house.  A quick glance around confirmed I was my normal height, just under an inch tall.  Was that my normal height?  That was how tall I had been for quite some time, and it felt familiar to me.  I took a couple seconds to think about it.  If I was Fulda’s pet, as indeed I was, it only made sense for me to be this size.

The vast, cold blue field of Fulda’s iris appeared in my window, and her pupil narrowed when she focused on me.  Her eye crackled with electricity as bolts of lightning arced across the void of her pupil.  “Hello there, my pet shrink!” she boomed.  Her voice seemed even louder and more powerful than usual.  Just the sound of it made my knees go weak, and it seemed to come from all around me.  “Are you ready to see one more thing I can do?”  As her most devoted servant and companion, there was nothing I wanted more.

I walked out of my house, eager to see what Fulda had in store for me.  When I opened the door, I was greeted by her gargantuan face stretching as far as I could see in any direction.  Her olive skin literally glowed, emanating a small amount of light from every pore.  All of her colors seemed more vibrant, from the bright pink of her lips to the flaming intensity of her auburn hair.  Lightning leapt across her pupils, bridging the distance between her light blue irises.  This was not the same Fulda I had created, but a much more powerful version of her.

Fulda had taken complete control of the universe.  Though she may shy from the title, she was for all intents and purposes a goddess.

She stood up to her full height, beaming as she peered down at me on her desk.  Aside from the slight glow, she looked the same; I had created her as my perfect woman, and I supposed she had the same idea of perfection.  From her smug grin, I knew that she was fully aware of what she could do now.  All of creation was her clay, and she could sculpt it with her mind however she saw fit.

“I’ll start with something simple,” Fulda boomed, and her voice echoed in my ears.  Each word left a minor imprint on my psyche, lasting a brief moment before fading to make room for the next.  She began to grow rapidly, and I figured she was simply shrinking me again until I realized I was looking up at her knees.  I glanced around and saw that the desk and everything on it, aside from a few writing implements, was still the same size.  When I looked back to her, I was faced with the white rubber wall of the toes of her Converse, and she was still increasing in size.  When she finally stopped, I was looking up at a range of perfectly geometrical mountains lining the toe of her shoe while she towered for miles above.

A series of buildings appeared at the foot of her bed, and I instantly recognized them as her university’s campus.  Fulda had made herself grow several miles tall when adding a single inch to her own height should have been impossible.  Despite an entire college appearing at her feet, she kept her attention unerringly on me.  I should have been beneath her notice at this size, more akin to a molecule than a person, but her gaze never strayed from me.  More than that, I always felt like she was looking at me rather than in my general direction.

“How do you like that?” she exclaimed, her voice simply a series of thunderous booms that I understood because she decided I could.  “Gamma Tau Sigma is officially the biggest sorority on campus!”  In the distance I could see hundreds of tiny people walking among the buildings, going about their day as though nothing was wrong.  Their whole lives were constrained to Fulda’s floor and it seemed perfectly routine to them.  In their minds, she had always been the giantess looming over campus.  “I’d bring the other Gammas in here, but I hardly think that’s necessary.”

Fulda waved her hands in front of her chest and everything returned to the way it had been before.  She was still gigantic, of course, but she was no longer a world-shattering titan miles tall whose body heat could change weather patterns.  I looked to the foot of her bed and the university was gone, no doubt distributed around us at its regular size.  With a simple thought she had undone what she had done, playing with reality like it was her toy.

“But you’ve seen me change the sizes of things before, so that’s hardly unusual.”  I realized that she did not quite realize the enormity of what she had done.  Due to the logical reactions of someone becoming gigantic in a city, I had decided that no one could grow themselves to keep egomaniacs from drawing the military’s attention, but she had blown right past that.  “I’ll change something a little less expected to show what I can do.”

She pointed over my head, and I turned to see my house shimmer and coalesce inward and upward.  After a moment, the house took on a new shape.  Fulda had turned it into a smaller version of herself, though I still barely came up past the new Fulda’s ankles.  It was an exact scale replica of her, from the French braided auburn hair to her long, shapely legs, with the exact same outfit the larger one was wearing.

The smaller Fulda, though not able to impose her will on the world around her, still behaved exactly like her much larger counterpart.  Her cold blue eyes turned downward, easily spotting me amid the white background of the larger Fulda’s tank top, and gave a big, toothy grin.  “Well look at that!” she proclaimed, her voice only slightly distorted by our difference in size.  Without the added bass and reverb from being a thousand times my size, it sounded a little deep, but with a strong softness to it.  “My pet’s big enough for me to pet now!”

Small Fulda strode forward, her legs still covering so much ground I could not hope to outpace her even in peak condition.  As she approached, I wondered if I even wanted to be caught by her.  I was still small enough for her to crush in a single hand, and thanks to the gigantic feet I had given her, I would still fit beneath one of her shoes.  Still, the only way out was jumping over the ledge and hoping the original Fulda’s thighs gave me enough cushion, and that would hardly improve my situation.  They were the same, and if the newer Fulda wanted to smash me with her hand, the larger one could do it with the tip of one of her fingers.

Smaller Fulda walked forward until she stood over me, boxing me in with her enormous Converse.  For once they did not block my peripheral vision, and though I could jump over them like hurdles I elected not to engage in such a vain gesture.  Even at a reduced size she was still majestic, and she set her hands on her hips and pushed out her chin to make herself as imposing as possible.  Though she was a fraction of the original’s size, she had the same poise and presence, and I hardly felt a difference between them looking up at her.

The newer Fulda leaned down and extended an arm toward me, and I decided to put up some token resistance.  I ran toward her right shoe, but before I could bound over it her hand set down in front of me, blocking my view with her huge palm.  In an instant her fingers snapped shut around me, clenching my body tightly from my shoulders to my feet.  Fulda stood, lifting me off the ground as though I weighed nothing and making my head swim from the sudden shock of movement.  When it stopped around her waist, she quickly lifted me toward her face, subjecting me to another whirlwind of movement and g-forces.

Her fist was tight around me, leaving naught but my head exposed, and I could not even make myself struggle against her fingers.  The warmth of her grip was offset by the chill of her gaze, and for once I was met by a face only slightly larger than I was.  She brought her free hand up and extended a finger, then set it atop my head.  To my surprise, she did not painfully shove my head down into her fist.  Instead, she slowly moved it back along my scalp, grinning softly as she looked at me.

The smaller Fulda gently stroked me repeatedly, cooing softly as her finger ran as far as it could down my back.  “You know,” she offered while she petted me, tilting her head slightly to the side, “I kind of have a thing for shorter guys.  Like, really shorter guys.  Like, able to fit in my hand shorter guys.  I mean, sure, I can control you with a finger, but I also think you’re so damn cute!  Think you could offer some insight into that, man currently in my hand?”  Her grip was tighter than ever, and her relentless petting made it difficult to think of a reply.

Before I could offer one, however, the smaller Fulda disappeared, and I was back in the palm of the one who had made her.  The ambient glow from her skin engulfed me, making it difficult to focus as I looked up toward her gigantic face several hundred feet above me.  “I think that’s an ample demonstration of that power,” she declared, subjecting me to the booming rumble of her voice once more.  “But none of that is what I really want to show you.”

Fulda stood, and I tumbled to fall face-first onto the smooth flesh of her palm.  She noticed my predicament, and brought her other hand up to hover above me, then extended a thumb and forefinger to rest on either side of me.  Carefully she plucked me out of her palm, then held me aloft so I could see where she was walking.  Even with her enduring glow, I was able to spot the small door of white light that appeared in the floor.  It was the same time Fulda had used to travel into my universe, and she was walking right toward it.

“I recognize you’re not dumb, just powerless, so I’ll explain a few things to you,” Fulda explained, her booming words reverberating in my ears.  “First, since I’m in control now, you’re not immortal, so if you get crushed or eaten, it’s for keeps.  Second, I can mess with stuff you’ve already written and published.  Not like I’m editing it, of course, I don’t have time for that.  More like I can create a new version of the story, or at least let someone relive it.  I’ve decided that you should get to live through your own stories.”  I looked at her in shock, unable to find words for how perverse I found this.

“Of course, I won’t be writing this story, so you’ll be on your own,” Fulda continued.  “All the other characters will be on their own too, working on whatever direction you gave them.  How’s that sound, my weak, deposed god-pet?”  With a self-satisfied smile, she stopped, standing astride the small glowing gateway in the floor.  “I hope it doesn’t sound too bad, because you’ll be living through it.  Or dying in it, if that’s what happens.  In a couple days, I’ll ask my high school friends if they remember smashing a tiny man senior year.”

As far as she was concerned, she was effectively sending me back in time, but she had come to see my past stories how I saw them, too.  I was going back to the very beginning, when Fulda was first introduced in a stand-alone story, and I did not like my odds.  “Can’t I just stay here with you?” I asked, not wanting to be subjected to the life I had consigned several fictional characters to.  “I’d like that a lot more than living through The Prom Incident!”

Fulda suppressed a laugh, spraying spit over her knuckles, and began kneeling.  “Oh, you’re not just going through that story,” she began.  “It’ll share some space with it, but you’ve defined the time before that well enough that I could get a grip.  I’m still single, you know, so you might end up as my boyfriend.  Or Alyssa’s, or Anni’s, or Vicky’s.”  I gulped, remembering what I had happen to Alyssa’s boyfriend while Fulda lowered me toward the doorway.  “Or I’ll smash you like the hundreds of tiny people I had by this time.  I guess it depends on how you wrote us, doesn’t it?”

My feet dangled above the portal and I could scarcely believe what I was hearing.  “But wouldn’t you rather keep me here as a pet and have fun with me?” I shouted as a last-ditch attempt to stop her.

Fulda chuckled, and the low rumble of her voice let me know in my core I had failed.  “Haven’t you heard?  I’m a goddess now, and the whole world is my pet.  On the off chance you get back to me, maybe I’ll have learned to control my glow by then.”  She smiled, lowering me into the portal.  Nothing I could say would have any effect on her.

Fulda grinned as she slowly dipped me into my own story, knowing that I would not have the same protections the original protagonist had.  There was no way out of this; I was going to become my own character, subject to the will and mercy of my other characters.  My eyes dipped into the light barrier, and the last thing I saw from this world was Fulda’s gargantuan face smiling, her blue eyes remaining like ghosts.  Her fingers let go, dropping me into the abyss, and I screamed as I fell into my world.

I landed on hard tile as though I had been placed there.  It was imperative I figure out where and when I was so I could properly prepare myself for what was to come.  I looked ahead and saw a narrow blue door integrated into the metal wall around it, a combination lock by the handle.  Somehow, I knew how to open the lock.  Still, a single locker would not provide me with all the information I needed to get by in this timeline.

Bits of new knowledge began popping into my brain.  I was a senior in high school and this was my locker, though logically it should have been one of many in a row.  For the past several years I had been homeschooled, though with my recent independence I had fought to go back to a normal school.  For whatever reason, I had met a lot of resistance, but they eventually acceded.  Beyond what was immediately applicable to my situation, everything was hazy.  It was clear I was still me, though I had foreign memories forced onto me to fit with the story.  However, I did not remember any such character from the story, and I hoped more would become clear in the future.

I looked to my sides and found nothing, but from the dark shadow around me I knew that could not be right.  Looking a bit further back, I spotted the ratty toe of a dirty Converse, the white sock showing through a crack where canvas met rubber.  A quick glance to the other side revealed the same thing, just a little further up and less damaged, though with more dirt on the toe and caked along the white wall running above her sole.  Glancing upward, I saw a vast expanse of milky-white skin over me, a bit of camouflage visible behind the pale calf spread wide.  I was still tiny, and someone was crouching over me!

While I struggled to process my predicament, the alabaster ceiling above me started to fall.  There was no time to think, only to react.  I ran away, toward her heels as fast as I could go, while the brown-stained heel of her Converse lifted up.  I felt it closing in and dove forward, throwing myself into the movement, and launched myself into the air.  The dull thud from her knee hitting the ground filled the air, but I was fortunately immune to any seismic waves it may have caused.  Upon landing I slid over the smooth tile some insignificant distance, still leaving me well beneath the colossal person.  I realized I had just avoided getting crushed by someone’s knee, while they were completely unaware I had even been there.

Once I recovered, I evaluated my situation again.  Her knee was right where I had been standing, and where I would be had I chosen to open my locker.  She would not have even remembered smashing me, I figured.  I could be squished just as easily as before, only now there were no take backs.

I would not be crushed anonymously.  I ran forward from her shoe, guiding around her knee, and emerged beside the tarnished toe of her gargantuan shoe.  I was still in her shadow, but I could see her looming over me.  More importantly, I was out from underneath any part of her body that could suddenly crush me.  Looking past her red shirt, I saw her gray eyes far above, focused on the locker in front of her, and the bangs of her straw-colored hair pushed back behind her ears.

Realizing who was above me, I hesitated.  Alyssa ate her tiny boyfriend, after all, and I could hardly expect to receive any better.  However, I could hardly be picky with the help I got, and aside from that one interaction she had been nothing but pleasant towards tiny people.  The only question was which behavior this character given life would draw upon.  I decided to try my luck with her.

I began jumping up and down, waving my arms overhead in hopes of grabbing her attention.  “Hey, Alyssa!” I shouted to augment my jumping.  “Down here!  On the floor!”  She showed no sign of noticing me.  Her eyes remained forward on her locker, and as I cried out for her help I noticed two long cords running from her ears into her pocket.  There was no way she could hear me over her music, and she would barely see me even if she looked down.  No matter what, I would not be able to get Alyssa’s attention.

She slammed the locker shut with a loud clang, causing me to recoil from the sudden explosion of sound.   She gathered her things – books a hundred times my size – in one hand, and stood to leave.  I made one last desperate attempt to grab her attention, but I doubted my chances of success from half the height of her toes.  Her left foot stepped away from me, and when her right sole filled my vision with its worn brown sole – almost orange, in my view, with most of the tread worn smooth – I knew she was merely callously stepping over me.

“Alyssa!” came a familiar voice, and the shoe above me stopped.  I scrambled toward the heel, and just managed to clear it before it set back down with a thud.  A horrific shockwave ran through me, knocking me onto my face while the rest of my body struggled to recover from the impact.  I forced myself to turn over and was met by the faded, gargantuan ALL-STAR on her heel while the conversation between giantesses proceeded above.  “Have you considered trying out for the volleyball team this year?  Someone short like you could really clean up as our center.”

“First of all,” Alyssa began, “I’m taller than average, so jot that down.  “Second of all, I wouldn’t get involved with your jock bullshit if you held a gun to my head.”  Their voices themselves were something I had to fight against, and I gripped the crease of a locker to keep from getting thrown backward.

“Well, you can’t fault me for asking.  Still coming over on Friday?”

“Yeah, of course!” Alyssa answered.  “I mean, who else has mysteriously absent parents and a fully stocked liquor cabinet?”

“Find me after seven drinks and it won’t be such a mystery anymore,” the mysterious voice said, patting Alyssa on the shoulder.  The dingy Converse stepped away from me, and I was left exposed.  Her conversation partner remained, however, and took a big step toward me.  All I could see before she was on top of me was a pair of long, tanned columns below a dark blue jacket.

Her shoe slapped against the tile with a loud crack, making the floor tremble beneath her feet.  I struggled to remain upright, dancing back and forth as the ground shifted.   Just when it settled another wave hit me, the result of her other gargantuan foot setting down beside me.  The second wave hit with the same intensity of the first, driving me down to one knee while it passed.  When the tremors from her ginormous feet stopped, I forced myself back up to evaluate my new surroundings.

The gigantic Chucks were pristine, practically fresh from the store, with shining white rubber and strongly defined black bands, in stark contrast with Alyssa’s grubby shoes.  I looked up from them, and saw a shapely pair of olive-skinned legs, the powerful thighs giving way to the thick quads far above me.  Tiny black shorts made a small indentation in her thighs before the dark blue of her varsity jacket took over.  Continuing upward, I caught the bright yellow leather sleeves imitating gold, and a shock of auburn hair pulled behind her head.  Cold blue eyes focused forward, not wavering from her locker.

There was no longer any doubt about it: Fulda had delivered me unto her own feet.

My mind raced as I considered what to do.  Fulda was a monster as a senior in high school and often shrunk people just for the joy of stepping on them.  Odds were pretty good that if she saw me, she would smash me without a second thought.  However, I knew that sooner or later I would have to be discovered by somebody or I would certainly die of thirst or starvation.  Moreover, she may be my last chance to get discovered.  If she left without finding me, I would be at the mercy of the entire student body when they came back, or whichever janitor buffed the floors.  She at least knew about tiny people and was the only person in the world aside from me who did.

I pushed aside the extreme likelihood that I would be squashed and made my decision.  “Hey!” I shouted, hoping she would be able to hear me.  “Hey, down here!  Between your feet!”  I ran toward the toes of her shoes, hoping I could get into her line of sight.  “Please, Fulda, help me!  I’m tiny and I don’t know where else to turn!”  It was lame, but I had no idea how else to get her attention.

I reached the white tips of her gigantic Converse and looked up, hoping she was looking for me, but saw no sign she had heard me.  Desperate, I began jumping up and down and waving my arms, shouting, “Come on, please look down!  I’m a tiny person, you have to help me!”  Despite my movements and shouting, Fulda reacted by opening her locker.  She pulled out a couple of large books and rested them against her forearm, then slammed the door shut with a clang.  I was no closer to getting noticed by her than I was with Alyssa.

An ear-piercing ding rang out, and Fulda reached behind herself to grab her phone.  When she moved it in front of her so she could read it, I was still hopping and waving in hopes that she would spot me.  She looked down at her phone beside her waist, then her eyes darted over to me.  I kept moving to keep her attention while she slid the phone back into her back pocket, and her cold blue eyes remained locked on me.  I had definitely gotten her attention.  The only question was whether that was a good thing.

“Hello there, puny man,” Fulda boomed, smirking.  “Tell you what: since I’ve already accounted for the three people I shrank this week – two by stomping, one by swallowing – I’ll give you a fighting chance.  Start running.”  She leaned her head back in a horrifying cackle, and I started running.  It took almost a minute to pass the crest of her toe, and another minute to make any meaningful progress.  The “fighting chance” she gave me was just another opportunity for her to have fun.

Sure enough, before I could even reach the next tile a wall of white slammed down in front of me, a distinctive black stripe cutting through it at eye level.  The ground trembled from the impact of her foot, and I stumbled forward to fall against the hard rubber of her sole.  Thinking quickly, I shoved off from the shoe and turned around, spotting her other shoe in the far distance.  She had not even needed to adjust her stance to block my escape with her titanic foot.

Even if it was hopeless, I still needed to put on a good show.  I ran toward her other shoe, feeling Fulda’s cold gaze on me the whole time.  She waited patiently while I adjusted to move around her shoe even though it took a couple minutes to reach it.  Glancing up, I saw she still had a smirk on her face, like watching me try to escape was something that brought her joy.  When I passed the rounded tip of her shoe I started sprinting, hoping to throw her off. 

No matter what I did I knew I could not escape Fulda, and she made that clear.  One tile later her foot slammed into the ground in front of me, stopping me in my tracks.  Before I could push off her foot flicked to the side, lifting my body off the ground and throwing me through the air.  I landed some distance away and slid over the tile until I finally came to a stop almost perfectly between her feet.

Fulda spread her feet further, bringing her watchful gaze closer to me, until not even the corners of her shoes could keep her standing.  She slid the rest of the way down, making a dull thud when her pelvis landed on the floor.  Once she was seated, Fulda gazed down at me and chuckled softly.  “I know most people think of me as a volleyball player, but I’m also a cheerleader,” she said, explaining how she did the splits out of nowhere.  With her long legs extended for hundreds of feet to either side, it was clear I could never have escaped her once I got her attention.  “And you’re coming home with the head cheerleader, if you can believe your luck.”

Fulda’s open hand descended toward me, and I was no longer able to even entertain the idea of looking for an escape.  I looked up at her hand as it grew in my view, quickly eclipsing everything except her palm.  It set down on top of me, knocking me to the ground, then her fingers slid in behind me.  With her fingers firmly pinning me against her hand Fulda stood back up, her rise gradual enough that I barely noticed it.  However, I still noticed the extreme heat coming from her hand, and enormous pressure from her fingers holding me in place.

Once she was standing again, Fulda opened her fist to allow me to gaze up at her.  She was looking down at me as well, a curious expression on her face.  “I’m not sure where you came from,” she began, “but you’ve picked a most auspicious time to come by.  I was worried I wouldn’t have a tiny man to smash this weekend, but you’ve resolved that issue quite handily.”

I was too shocked to reply before Fulda reached her BMW and her fingers curled around me again.  Just what role had the older Fulda dropped me into, anyway?  There were hundreds of people she had smashed this year, and I could have been any of them.  However, I did not think that she had made me one of her random shrinks.  She kept meticulous track of all the people she shrank, and I was not one of them.  There must be something else going on behind the scenes that my memories had simply not unlocked yet that would tell me why I was tiny and why Fulda had no immediate memory of shrinking me.

The drive to Fulda’s house was startlingly calm, with her doing her best not to move the hand holding me.  Once she stopped, however, the movement began again, with her hand swaying with each step she took.  I realized that everything she did, from the ease with which she drove to looking for her keys, was not for my benefit, but so she would not lose me.  Once we were inside her mansion her hand flattened and she began walking toward her cavernous dining room.

When we reached the dining table, Fulda set her hand atop it and tilted, causing me to slide out of her palm and onto the hard wood surface.   “I know you can’t go anywhere, but don’t go anywhere,” she said, pulling her hand away.  “It would be a tragedy if I stepped on you without knowing.”  While that was far from reassuring, I had no choice but to watch Fulda as she walked toward the burnished steel refrigerator.

As Fulda considered the refrigerator’s contents, the front door opened and two gigantic blonds entered the house.  While they were both gargantuan, the taller one was wearing all black, while the shorter one wore blue jeans with a metal band t-shirt.  I immediately recognized them as Gina and Jessica, Fulda’s sisters who were even more cruel toward tiny people than their oldest sister.  They were not supposed to know about tiny people or shrinking yet, though.  Maybe they would overlook me because of that?

They tossed their bags aside once they were in the door and started walking toward the kitchen.  I watched all of their steps with a vested interest, because my life depended on it.  When they reached the dining room table Fulda closed the refrigerator door, a bottle of water in her hand, and started walking back toward me.  However, her two sisters were standing around me, and I did my best to go unnoticed.  No matter how still I stood, however, Gina’s eyes still found me, though I was not sure if she realized what she had spotted.

Gina raised a hand toward me, fingers closed together, as though she knew what she was doing.  It hung in the air for a moment before racing down, the vast expanse of her palm primed to smash me.  There was nothing I could do as her hand came toward me on a trajectory to obliterate me.  I had been worried about Fulda smashing me, but it turned out Gina would get the honors after all.

Skin slapped against skin, and I looked up to see Gina’s palm hovering mere inches above me with Fulda’s hand wrapped around her wrist.  “Not this one,” Fulda declared.  “He’s mine.”

Gina tried to shake her wrist free from Fulda’s grip but found that her older sister was strong enough to hold her.  “What are you talking about?” she protested, still staring at me with her deep blue eyes.  “Is your mind so far gone that you’ve bonded with a bug?”

“That’s… not a bug,” Fulda reluctantly admitted.  “It’s a person.”

“Wow!”  Gina leaned in so she could get a better look at me.  As her gigantic, astonished face filled my vision, I took a step back, but it made no difference.  Her eyes were still locked on me, and I helplessly gazed up at her tremendous features.  “I knew I was getting tall with this growth spurt, but I didn’t think I was getting so big people looked like bugs!”  With less than an inch between me and her mouth, the wind from her voice staggered me and blew my hair back.  “But then, shouldn’t you two look about that size to me, too?  Are you also growing?”

“I wish,” Fulda replied, chuckling.  “He’s a tiny person!”

“Right, a tiny person,” Jessica interjected sarcastically.  “You’ve got a rich imagination.  No one is that small, someone would’ve stepped on them by now.  Why don’t you just tell us what’s so special about this bug that Gina can’t squish it?”

“No really, he’s a person!” Fulda insisted.  Throughout all of this Gina kept a close, watchful gaze on me, studying every aspect of me.  She must have realized by now that I’m a person, but was keeping silent.  “Go on, say something!”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Gina’s tongue snaked out of her mouth and along her upper lip, leaving a thin trail of saliva on the pink flesh.  She audibly gulped, and I watched the lump move down her throat.  Throughout the whole thing, she never took her eyes off me, like it was a threat.

“Say something or I’ll let these two loose on you.”

Gina’s lips spread into a smile, and I resolved not to give her the satisfaction of smashing me.  Not yet, at least.  Warm air blasted me from her nose and my heart raced, but I had to say something.  “Uh, hi,” I managed, and my voice cracked.  I just hoped it was enough.

Gina’s mouth opened wide and loud, bellowing laughter rushed forward from it.  It hit me with such force that I was thrown back several inches and landed on my butt.  If that had not been enough she began slapping the table, making loud pounding sounds while the table violently shook from her strikes.  “His voice!” she called out, still making the ground beneath me tremble.  “It’s so high-pitched and tiny!”  I chose to look on the bright side and be glad she had heard me.

“See?  Now do you believe me?” Fulda asked.

“I’m not convinced,” Jessica said.  “That could’ve just been a bug sound.”  Her hand lunged toward me, and with Fulda still restraining Gina’s arm she could not react fast enough to stop it.  Jessica’s hand engulfed me and slid my body along the table until I contacted the heel of her palm.  With a fingertip holding me in place she lifted me off the table, fast enough to make me feel like my insides stayed behind.  Mercifully, the ascent was over an instant, and my mind quickly caught up to me.

Jessica’s fingers unfurled, and I was confronted with another gigantic face.  Her expertly plucked eyebrows were the same straw color as her hair, and she had the same light blue eyes as Fulda.  A long, aquiline nose rested perfectly between them, and her plump lips were wide enough to easily consume me.  She had a square, dimpled chin and clear skin, with a healthy glow from frequent physical activity outside. Right now, my main concerns were the eyes half my height looking right at me and the mouth that I could be inside without any notice.

A simple greeting would not be enough to satisfy her.  “Hey, put me back!” I shouted.  “I’m Fulda’s, not yours!”  It felt wrong that I was already claiming to be Fulda’s property, but it just slipped out.

Jessica’s reaction was much more subdued than Gina’s just a slight smirk upon hearing my voice.  “Okay, you’ve convinced me, tiny person,” she admitted.  “That just raises the question, though, of how you got so tiny.  Did you, like, shrink him, Fulda?”

“Shrink him?” Fulda repeated, stifling a laugh.  “Now who’s got a rich imagination?  Of course I didn’t shrink him, he’s just a tiny guy!”  I was always impressed by Fulda’s ability to deceive someone without lying, even though I had given it to her.

“I’ll just have to ask him about that,” Jessica replied, still cradling me in her palm.  “He said something else interesting, apparently he’s yours? Is he your boyfriend?”

Gina audibly gasped and stood, tearing her arm out of Fulda’s grip.  “Fulda’s got a boyfriend?” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, and her boyfriend’s so puny I mistook him for a bug!”

“Wow, he must be pretty small!  I bet she could step on him without even knowing!”

“I bet she could swallow him!”

“Fulda’s gonna sit on her boyfriend’s lap and crush him!”

“Guys, knock it off!” Fulda interjected.  “He is not my boyfriend!”

“Uh-huh.”  Jessica sounded unconvinced.  “Tell me, have you two fooled around yet, or are you worried you’ll lose him in there?”

“Give him to me!” Fulda growled, lunging for me, but Jessica closed her fist and pulled me away.  My head reeled from the sudden movement, but it stopped just as quickly as it started.

“I’ll give him back, I just want to see something first.”  I felt the descent like I was on a very fast elevator, then the world turned over as Jessica rotated her hand.  “He’s so small he probably hasn’t gone back to back with anyone for years!”  Jessica’s fingers opened, depositing me on the floor.  To one side, I saw the gargantuan Gina towering over me, her black suede flats alone dwarfing me.  On the other was the gigantic Jessica, the white lining around the sole of her blue hi-top All Stars much taller than I was.  While I got back to my feet they stood so their backs were to me, as though they were going to compare their heights to someone who did not even come up to their ankles.

“Hey Gina,” Jessica began, “how tall did you say you were?”

“Six-five when I got measured this morning,” the titaness answered, “but I’ve been having quite the growth spurt recently, so I might be six-six already.  I’m not taller than Fulda yet though, so I haven’t quite reached six-eight, but I’m sure I will soon.”

“Yes, we all remember the one time that doctor said you’d be seven feet tall,” Fulda butted in.

“How about you Jess, how tall are you?” Gina asked, ignoring her oldest sister.

“I dunno, like six-three?” the other giantess answered.  “And I did notice that you were taller than me other day!  I just didn’t want to say anything..”

“And how tall would you estimate Fulda’s little boyfriend here is?”

“An inch if he’s lucky,” Jessica replied.  “He’s so puny, if I moved my foot back a little bit right now I would squash him.  He doesn’t even reach the top of my shoes!”

“I know, right?” Gina added.  “If Fulda weren’t watching, I could smash him by accident.  I bet I could even swallow him without trouble!  Definitely an inch at best.”

“Fulda, does your boyfriend live in a glass, or are you worried that you’ll drink him?”

“And do you want us to set out some glue traps in case he tries to get away?”

“Okay, that’s enough.”  I was probably the only person, real or fiction, to have ever been glad to have Fulda’s humongous Converse swing into view and slam down close enough for me to be shaken by the impact of her foot.  “Yes, he’s very small,” she said, establishing her presence between them.  “And whether or not he’s my boyfriend, he’s still mine, so lay off.”  Her hand swept in toward me, lifting me off the floor when the pad of her middle finger struck me.  She pressed me into her palm then stood, confident that I was secured inside her fist.  With me in hand, Fulda started toward the stairs while her sisters groaned in disappointment.

“Come on, we were just having fun!” Gina complained

“Yeah, we’re just messing with him because he’s so small!” Jessica added.  “Your boyfriend was never in any real danger!”

“Well, you’ve lost tiny man privileges!” Fulda called back to them, and I heard the distinctive thud of her huge foot landing on the first step.  “You’ll never see him again if I have anything to say about it!”  I hoped that was not another example of Fulda deftly lying by telling a truncated version of the truth.

For someone who took steps three at a time, Fulda held me surprisingly steady as she made her way up the stairs.  I was surprised when the muffled sound of a door opening reached me through her fist, and I soon heard it slam shut behind her.  The force of two thudding steps reached me in her hand, then the world was thrown into tumult, joined by the sound of a dozen springs compressing under great weight.  While I tried to get my bearings, the giant fist holding me lowered until it found stability on Fulda’s abs.

Her fingers opened, and I fell a short distance onto her stomach.  It was surprisingly comfortable for something so solid, and the fresh white cotton tank top felt good on my skin.  Lying prone on her abs, I looked up across the vast expanse of space to the rounded ridge of her breasts and her face looming high over them.  Her auburn hair was pulled back in a French braid, and her icy eyes were looking at me like I was the only thing in the room.  A straight nose fit perfectly on her lightly-freckled face, and her pink glossed lips reflected the room’s light.

“Now that we have some privacy from those hellions, I have some questions for you myself,” Fulda boomed, and her voice rumbling through her body felt amazing as it hit my body.  “How did you know my name when you first saw me, and why are you tiny?”

So she had heard me!  As I searched for an answer that would make sense, I found a memory of the character I was inhabiting that should satisfy both answers, which I expressed to her.  “Fulda, I was in class with you for like ten years,” I began.  “I was the short guy in class, you were the tall girl, but we weirdly got along pretty well.  You liked to stand beside me and show off how tall you were getting, at least, which I guess is a form of getting along.  Then, one day I started shrinking.  No one knew why, but I was losing an inch or two a day – about as fast as you were growing then, if I remember.  My parents pulled me out of school when I was around two feet tall, but I kept getting smaller, like it was a reverse growth spurt.  I wanted a normal life though, and a normal school, so when I turned eighteen I got emancipated and convinced the district to let me come back.  It may not have been the best decision, everything considered, but I don’t regret it.”

As she listened to my story, an embarrassed smile spread across Fulda’s face.  She tried to suppress it by biting her lip, but the longer it went on the bigger her smile was, and she could no longer hide it.  “So, don’t get mad,” she said.  “I kind of learned how to shrink people our freshman year and may – may have – used you as a guinea pig for my ability to shrink people over time.  I was disappointed when you got pulled from class, since I wanted to see how small you’d get without any additional effort on my part.  But now I guess we can see that, and you got really small!”

“Yeah, I sure did.”  My character probably should have been mad at her for that, but I knew that was not how it happened for me.  If I told her the truth, I would just sound crazy.  There was no way she would believe that she was living in a story within a story, being modified by her, and a version of herself from further along the storyline had shrunk me and deposited me into the story for her to find, so I left it at my character’s explanation.

“You know, I figured you’d be angrier about this,” Fulda said, and the feeling of her body vibrating against mine from her voice felt fantastic.  “I think you like it.  I think you like really tall women and want a woman to really tower over you.  I think you always wanted to be bug-sized in comparison to me and just didn’t want to say it.”  She waited a moment for her words to sink in before continuing, “Yeah, I remember you looking up at me in awe when I was like two feet taller than you.  Why else would you have sought me out instead of anyone else in school?”

She was right, of course, or I would not have created her in the first place, but I could not let her know that.  “You were just the closest person to me at the end of the day,” I deflected.  “They made me a special, tiny locker just below yours.  I tried to get someone else’s attention, but they didn’t hear me!”

“And yet I could.  Funny, since I’m much taller than most of the other people at school.”  Fulda’s hand snuck in from the side and grabbed the back collar of my shirt, then plucked me off her abs.  “Don’t worry, tiny man who likes gigantic women.  Your secret is safe with me.”  Fulda leaned forward, pushing me back as her spine lifted off the headboard, and seized the lace of one of her shoes.  With a loud pop she slid the shoe off her foot, then grabbed it in one hand.  “And I’ll be the last person who ever hears it.”

This was not going well for me.  Fulda sat up and brought the empty shoe toward her, then held me over the opening for her foot.  Her fingers opened, dropping me into her shoe, and I landed in the middle of a giant blue C printed on her insole.  I looked up through the tunnel of white canvas to see her smirking down at me, barely able to contain her laughter.

Fulda leaned forward, lowering the shoe to the floor.  She kept it remarkably steady, making sure I did not slide down to the toes, and set it down gently on the carpet.  Her hand let go, and she sat upright so she could look straight down at me.  “I’ve crushed hundreds of tiny people this year alone,” she started, “but I think you’ll be the most satisfying.  “Not only are you the longest burn, but it’s so rare I get to feel someone actually get squished under my foot.  Most of them are under my shoe, and it’s just not as satisfying.”

Before I could protest, her enormous socked foot appeared in the hole above me.  The thin cotton fibers strained to contain her huge foot and had even more trouble when she flexed her toes above me.  She tapped the opening of her shoe a couple times, making the whole structure shake from the impact, then pointed her toes downward so they would start sliding in.

“Poor, tiny man,” she said as her foot entered her shoe above me.  “Always tiny, even before I shrank you.”  Her gigantic foot pressed further into the shoe, and I began to hear canvas straining to contain it.  “And now I finally get to step on you.  How fitting that you tried so hard to get back into class with me, and I’m the one who’s going to step on you.”  Her foot was almost entirely the shoe now, with just her heel hanging above me.  “I remember you being smart, but I guess that doesn’t mean you have good ideas.”

Fulda worked a pair of fingers in behind her heel, pulling back the canvas of her shoe.  Just one more thrust of her heel now and I would be little more than a stain spread across the bottom of her sock.  “It was pretty funny watching my sisters have fun with you, though.”  Canvas strained again as her heel lowered into the shoe, drawing closer toward smashing me.  “They think it’s funny how small you are, and I think it’s hilarious.”  Her heel encroached further, and the cotton fibers from her sock tickled my face.  “Weirdly enough, you seem to enjoy being tiny, unlike most of the other people I shrink.”  Fulda’s foot held still though it was only millimeters from crushing me.  “It might be funny to keep you around for a while and see what happens.  Three giantesses in one house and a single tiny man.  We can play so many games with you until one of us unceremoniously squashes you.”

She began to withdraw her foot, and I heard the canvas return to its normal form in its absence.  When it was fully removed, I could see her beaming down at me as she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees.  With a sudden lunge she reached down and seized the shoe with a hand, rolling me back against the heel when she picked it up.  When it stopped, she tilted it to the side, and I saw a vast plain of peach through the hole for her foot.  Fulda tilted her shoe until it was upside down to deposit me into her palm, then tossed the shoe onto the ground with a thud.

Fulda looked down at me, resting her chin on a finger as she considered what to do.  “But what is your role in all this?” she asked.  “A tiny man that I haven’t squished is a rare thing indeed.”  She ran the finger along her jawline and began thinking out loud.  “You’d be useless as a slave – you can lift, what, a gram or two? – and I don’t like the idea of you as a pet, either.”

While she paused to think further, I decided to interject.  “Don’t I get a say in this?”

Fulda laughed.  It was a loud, cruel laugh that shook my bones and covered me in a cloud of hot, moist air.  “I’m not about to start taking suggestions from people I can swallow whole.  You don’t get a vote.  I own you.  You’re my property.”  A loud crack rang out when she snapped her fingers.  “That’s it!  You’re my toy!  My plaything!”  She took a moment to inhale deeply and a big, radiant smile spread across her face.  “I can use you however I feel, in whatever game I want, whenever I feel like it.  I can even break you if the mood strikes me.  And there’s not a single thing you can do about it.”

The manic glee in her eyes as she detailed the arrangement unnerved me.  This was twice now I had effectively become the property of one of my creations, and this version of Fulda seemed even happier about it despite not knowing the depth of her achievement.  “Is there any — “

“Did I pull your fucking string?” Fulda demanded, interrupting me.  I stared at her blankly, so she continued.  “Then why do I hear you talking?”  The short, staccato words in her booming voice made her even more imposing, and I silently gazed up at her in complete terror.  “You will only speak to me when I allow it, and there will be no doubt about the few times that is.  Do you understand?”  Scared to talk out of turn again I simply nodded, and she glowered down at me.  “Well?  Answer me!”

“Yes, Fulda!” I yelped.

“Good.”  She glanced from me to the floor just beyond her bed’s footboard and grinned.  “Now, it’s time to play with my new toy.” 

The way Fulda said that made my blood run cold.  There was a bright twinkle in her icy eyes, and I got the feeling she wanted to test how much control she had over me.  Going off how I had written her in this period, she could be extremely cruel to people she shrank, and it was debatable whether she even saw them as people anymore.  Now that I could no longer reel her in, she may take that to extremes with me.  It may not be a control test I was in for, but one of durability.

Fulda flattened her palm into a vast plain.  Her glossed lips spread from a grin to a full smile, then her other hand descended to rest at the base of her palm.  I had written this setup enough to know what came next.  “When you hit the ground, start running!” Fulda commanded, her deep voice making my body tremble even in her hand.  “That is, if you’re still conscious.  I want this to be sporting.”

With a soft click her finger shot forward from her thumb, scraping against her palm as it barreled toward me.  Her unadorned nail struck me in the chest, lifting me out of her palm and forcing my body to conform along her fingertip.  In an instant her finger reached its fullest extent, and momentum launched me into the air.  Still formed in the shape of her fingertip, I flew toward the ceiling, and saw Fulda’s expression of sheer ecstasy as she watched my puny body launch out of her hand.  My ascent slowed, and I just missed a light fixture on my way to the apex of my journey.  As I passed, I did not have time to enjoy the light’s warmth before I began plummeting to the ground.

My descent was slow at first, but quickly accelerated.  I raced toward the ground and landed on my chest, extremely glad I had always specified she had thick carpet.  From my descent’s inertia, my body embedded itself down to the roots of Fulda’s carpet, the fibers making way as my body pushed through them.  When I finally stopped, I was dazed and had the wind knocked out of me, but I could still move.  Slowly, and with a twinge of pain in my abdomen, I pushed myself off the very base of Fulda’s floor to stand among the knee-high carpet fibers.

I looked around to evaluate my options for where I could run and hide from her.  The yawning cavern underneath her bed was an inviting choice, but I knew that once I got underneath it there was nowhere else to hide.  Plus, it would be the first place she looked when she could not find me.  Scurrying under her dresser would keep me safe for longer, and she would have to work harder to get to me.  Was that a good thing, though?  That might just annoy her and make her even more likely to smash me.  I decided to split the difference and run toward the door, hoping she would at least find it entertaining.

“Now comes the most decisive question for you,” Fulda boomed, and the floor shook when her huge feet thudded onto the ground.  “Do I want to risk breaking my new toy?  I can have so much fun with a good, obedient toy.  Then again, I do love it when my toys break, and you’ll be broken sooner or later.  They make such a satisfying crunch.  I can always pick up another toy from school if I want.”

The floor trembled from her footfalls, getting stronger as they drew nearer, and I risked a glance over my shoulder to see what she had chosen.  Her signature lo-top black Converse were tied around her feet, with the canvas of one already wrinkled as she got ready to take another step forward.  She had decided she was okay with breaking me as long as she got to have a little fun.

“I can see you running from me!” she boomed as the ground shook from another step.  “You know how to follow basic commands, that’s a good sign.”  The ground shook again, in two stages this time, and I knew she was drawing close.  All she had to do to win was go her normal speed and Fulda was not holding back.  “Maybe you’ll survive our first game after all.”  Another quake and aftershock made me stumble, and I doubted I she was watching where she stepped.

I was only a few inches from the door, just a quick burst to the threshold.  Resolved to get one over on her, I dashed toward the slit underneath the door, picking up my knees to step over the thick, round carpet fibers in front of me.  The ground shook, nearly toppling me over as I stood on one leg.  Staggering toward the door, I prepared to dive into the carpet as a shadow fell over me.

“Sorry.  I can be a little rough with my toys,” Fulda rumbled, and I leapt toward the door.  There was just enough space between the wood and carpet for my body, and I slid through by the skin of my teeth.  Fulda’s gigantic Converse slammed down behind me, just missing me, making the ground quiver from the force of her stomp.  Had I been beneath it, there was no doubt I would have been obliterated.

Having narrowly escaped death, I stood back up and walked into the hallway.  When Fulda found out I was not a stain on her shoe she would certainly pursue me, and that was part of the fun.  If she wanted to play with me, I would give her a game.  She could look for me in one of the spare rooms or downstairs if she wanted to play with me so bad.  After all, I had written all the people she had smashed, and knew everything they should have done.

Before I could step out from underneath the door, footfalls on the stairs made me pause.  They were getting louder, coming upstairs, and soon they would be able to see me.  The only other people in the house were Fulda’s sisters, and they were the only people whose attention I wanted less than hers.

As Fulda’s sisters ascended the stairs, their voices reached me amid their pounding steps.  “I just think it’s weird she’s so attached to a tiny man,” Jessica said.  “There’s got to be something going on.”

“I know, right?” Gina replied.  “Something’s fishy.  She’s embarrassed about something.  I mean, I’m only two years younger than her, it’s not like I don’t know what’s going on.  And if she’s into some weird stuff, so what?  Maybe it’d be cool to have a tiny boyfriend, I don’t know!”

“I think it’d be pretty cool,” Jessica responded, and their blond crowns crested the top of the stairs.  “They’re totally in your control, so they have to do what you say.  And if you want someone else, you can just squish ‘em!  Like, are they even people, legally?”

They neared the top of the stairs, and would soon be able to see me hiding underneath Fulda’s door.  I could not allow that, so I turned around and saw the white rubber toe of Fulda’s enormous Converse in front of me.  Telling myself that she might respect or appreciate me for coming back once I was free, I grabbed on to the rounded rubber spikes that lined the front of her shoe and hoisted myself up.  After a few seconds of effort I was on top of her shoe and looking at the vast expanse of canvas and shoelaces in front of me.

Fortune favors the bold, I told myself, and rushed forward onto the lowest level of her shoelaces.  I sprung off from the black canvas onto the white woven fabric and began scrambling upward, unsure if she could even see me.  Limb by limb I climbed up the crisscrossed laces until I was at the steep wall of her shoe’s tongue, a repeating pattern of white-lined triangles running along the top.  Climbing atop that, I balanced against Fulda’s ankle and looked up her shin.  It was a sheer, smooth cliff, with the only handholds available the tiny imperfections in her bronze skin.

After coming this far, I was not about to let something like an unclimbable obstacle stop me.  I launched up from her shoe and clawed for a handhold, desperate for anything, but her skin was too smooth for me to find anything.  When I slid back down to her shoe, I barely made an indentation on the loose tongue.  If I wanted to get up her leg, I would need to go around to the back.

Before I could make another attempt, Fulda’s heel lifted off the ground, tilting her shoe enough that there was no way I could remain standing on it.  She launched me from her ankle, and the arc carried me past her shoe until I was over the carpet.  I landed on my back and bounced off the thick fibers until coming to a stop beside her toes.  At least I had not hit the door or ended up outside it.

From the ground, I got a full view of Fulda.  As I had just been made well aware her Converse towered over me, with the toe of the shoe alone at least twice my height.  Her ankle was even further up, necessitating a climbing expedition along her shoe to even reach the base.  From there, her smooth, toned calves provided me no succor, and her thighs bulged outward against her shorts.  Fulda’s legs were magnificent, as I had designed them to be, and her white tank top followed the contours of her abs.  Beyond that were her significant breasts, not too large for someone of her stature but absolutely massive to me.  Past those, all I could see was her eyes, fixed downward as she searched for me.

Practically immobile beside her shoe, it did not take long for her to spot me.  When she did, she smirked and leaned her head back, immensely cocky about her victory over someone less than an inch tall.  “Did you really just try to climb me?” she asked, doing her best to keep from laughing.  “By the way, this is one of the cases where I expect you to answer.”

“Yes, I did,” I told her.  “It seemed like the best move at the time, considering your shoe was blocking me from anything else.”

“Yeah, I’ve got big feet,” Fulda replied, smirking.  “And you tried to leave my room, didn’t you?”

Fulda had a finely-tuned bullshit sensor and would be able to tell if I misled her.  “Yes, I did,” I answered again.  “If you want to chase me down, I figured it would be best to open up the whole house as your hunting grounds.”

“Really?” Fulda responded, her cheeks dimpling as her smirk grew larger.  “Then what stopped you?  I would definitely like to chase one of my toys through the whole house.”

“Your sisters came up the stairs.”  A bit of embellishment could not hurt, I figured, especially if it flattered her.  “But I’m not their toy, I’m yours.  It would hardly be fair if one of them got to play with me before you finished your game, would it?”

“I guess you have a point, even though you are tiny.”  Fulda leaned forward and I recoiled from her hands until they pinched around her shoelaces.  With one steady pull she untied one of her shoes, drawing the lace as far out as it could go.  She moved her other shoe behind her, and with a loud pop her left foot sprung free of her shoe.  Turning her toes downward, Fulda scooted the shoe back until it was beyond the reach of even her massive feet.

“You’re a very obedient toy,” Fulda said, lifting her socked foot off the ground.  “You not only do exactly what I say, but you interpret the thought behind it.”  She moved the foot until it was directly over me and let it hang there while she spoke.  “Plus, I can count on one hand the people who wanted to climb me, and they were the most contentious.”  Fulda smirked and twitched her toes downward, making the whole sock strain as it bent to conform around them.  Her gigantic socked foot loomed over me, and there was nowhere for me to run.  My whole future depended on how hard she would bring it down.

The huge foot loomed closer, but not quickly enough to annihilate me.  When it was close enough that it was all I could see looking up and each individual thread could be defined, it stopped.  Fulda curled her toes downward and hooked her big toe behind me, pulling me away from the door.  With a sudden hard shove from her toes she yanked me toward her hard enough to send me tumbling over the thick carpet.  I rolled over the fibers until I was by her heel, dwarfed by the tremendous Converse she was still wearing.

“Let’s play a little longer,” Fulda said as she bent down and grabbed a shoelace.  “You have until I get this shoe off and back in its place to get as far as you can.  I doubt you’ll get very far with those puny legs of yours, but we’ll see.”  She stood back up, and her socked foot soared overhead on its way behind her.  The toes braced against her heel, and with a soft pop her foot emerged from the canvas.  Slowly she withdrew the rest of her foot from the shoe, and the floor rumbled when her foot landed back on the floor.

Fulda bent down and hooked a finger into each of her shoes, and lifted them into the air when she stood.  With the wall of black canvas out of the way, I could see the terrifying behemoth wrapped in white behind it.  I was awe-struck by its size even from some distance, but Fulda’s thundering voice brought me back to the issue at hand.  “Are you waiting for me to wind you up?  Get moving!”

I ran toward the furthest wall of her room, and the enormous barrier of her foot disappeared when she stepped away.  Thinking quickly, I made for the depression where her foot had been so I could run a bit faster.  Unfortunately, by the time I reached it the carpet had completely uncompressed and came up to my knees again.  My journey was not made any easier by the floor constantly shaking from Fulda’s steps.  Though the quakes got weaker the further away she was, they still made me be conscious of my footing with each step.

The tremors stopped, giving me a brief reprieve.  With the floor steady I could make some quick progress.  I bounded over the carpet fiber in front of me and immediately sprung forward again, the closest I could get to a dash.  Upon landing I leapt once more, overtaking two whole carpet fibers this time.  My legs were beginning to ache from the effort, but I paid it no mind.  Whether I was an entertaining toy for Fulda would determine whether I lived or died.

It felt like I was making solid progress, but when I looked at Fulda’s dresser I was barely any closer.  Despite all the effort I was putting into it, I had only gone a couple of inches.  The carpet was slowing me down too much, and I had to spend too much energy overcoming obstacles every step I took.  Aside from that, I was simply too small to get very far.  Even over a clear, flat surface I might have made it half a foot.

Worse yet, the floor began shaking again.  Fulda was done, and in just a few seconds she would be on top of me.  I continued struggling forward, but the quakes grew steadily stronger until I was stumbling after each of her steps.  The pounding of her footfalls that accompanied each tremor filled me with trepidation, like it was a countdown.  Fulda’s shadow fell over me, and I knew the timer had reached zero.

An enormous white wall slammed down in front of me, creating the most powerful quake yet.  I staggered back to stay standing and gazed up at the tremendous socked foot in front of and over me.  The sock was barely big enough to contain the foot and clung tightly to the curves of her sole and heel, the cotton threads straining to stay together.  I stared up at it and observed the light playing along the sides, casting long shadows over the bottom of her foot.  In turn, the foot cast a shadow over me; I did not think I would ever get used to being in the shadow of Fulda’s foot.

“Stop.  Right.  There,” Fulda demanded, and I froze in place.  “If you move again, the next thing I’ll be doing is washing my toy off my socks.”  I was already still, entranced by the size of her foot alone.  I watched, fixated as it lifted effortlessly into the air, then slid backwards until her toes were even with me.  She tilted her foot downward and rotated it slightly, setting her big toe down beside me.  The digit itself dwarfed me.

Fulda twisted her foot to the side, striking me with her big toe.  The blow lifted me off my feet, and I flew in a low arc until I was embedded in the carpet in front of Fulda, almost exactly between her feet.  She was looking down, smiling as she towered over me, and placed her hands on her hips.  For a moment she simply loomed over me, grinning in satisfaction.  I looked back up at her, fearful of what she was going to do.  If she wanted, she could smash me like an insect and there was nothing I could do to stop her, and I imagined the same thought was running through her mind.

Her colossal foot came into view, and she moved it until the center of her sole was right over me.  “I had fun playing with you,” she rumbled, “but it’s time for that to end.”  This was it, then.  I was to be squashed under the enormous foot of my own gargantuan creation because she thought it was fun.

Fulda’s foot set down on top of me, the soft skin of her sole giving way around my puny body.  It formed a seal around me, perfectly flush with the carpet, creating a fleshy pocket that contained me perfectly.  I pushed back, trying to move the massive weight of her foot, but it was much too heavy to budge.  “No, Fulda, please!” I shouted as the pressure increased.  “Don’t crush me!”  Desperately I tried to wiggle out from beneath her foot and she responded by leaning a little harder, pinning me in place.  Panicking, I gasped for breath as her foot pressed down, and I heard my ribs creak under the pressure.  The air in my tiny pocket got thinner, and it was now a race between her smashing and suffocating me.

My struggle intensified.  I clawed at the fibers of Fulda’s sock, so weak I could barely even budge them, in an effort to drag myself out.  Rumbling laughter reached me through the thick flesh of the enormous foot crushing me, and I felt extremely light-headed from the lack of air.  Without air, my fight for life weakened until -

When my eyelids fluttered open, I was shocked.  Fulda had crushed me, right?  I was dead, nothing more than a red splotch my creation’s sock.  She squished me without remorse, just as I had her to do countless other tiny people, either by directly describing it or asserting she had.  A fitting end, I supposed, for me to wind up stuck to the bottom of her foot.

If I was dead, though, why did my chest hurt so much?

Hoping for an explanation, I looked around.  From the absence of an enormous drafting desk against the wall I could tell I had not been transported back to her dorm room, nor did I see any of my familiar things around me.  A gargantuan lamp loomed over me, making it evident I was still tiny, and I walked away to escape its bright light.  I had awoken on a vast wooden platform, and a wide plain of white carpet stretched away until it met a tremendous white wall.  No matter how soft the carpet was, a fall down to it would kill or seriously injure me, and I was not quite ready to give away my life so soon after realizing I still had one.

A look to my left cleared up a lot.  Fulda sat on her bed, its dark blue sheets wrinkled under her weight and a pillow fully crushed by her broad shoulders rested against the headboard.  Her feet were pulled almost to her butt, and a textbook the size of a parking lot rested open against her thighs.  She was focused on the text, her blue eyes moving quickly over the black text, and paid me no mind.

It was likely she had no idea I was alive, much less awake, yet I hesitated to call out to her.  I remembered well her demand that I never speak out of turn, and if she mistakenly thought I was dead, she may just finish the job.  However, I did not know whether this was the same Fulda, or if I was the same person: if I really had been killed, everything could be different.  Besides, I was small, but she was bound to notice me sooner or later, and I did not want that to be a surprise.  Taking a deep breath, I got ready to announce my presence.

“What just happened?” I shouted as loud as I could.  There was not so much as an ear twitch of acknowledgement from Fulda, so I prepared to repeat myself.

“Great, my new toy can turn itself back on,” Fulda said, her deep, powerful voice making my knees shake.  She kept her eyes straight forward, not giving me one ounce of attention.  “What do you want, man-bug?”

It was the same Fulda, and I was probably the same person.  “I was just wondering what happened,” I answered.  “Didn’t you smash me?”

“You sound disappointed I didn’t.”  Fulda turned a page before continuing.  “And I will if you keep bothering me.  I’ve got a lot to read, and your squeaky voice isn’t making it easy to concentrate.”  Not wanting to antagonize her further, I fell quiet.  She turned another page before breaking the silence, asking, “Don’t you have homework, too?  Or do they not give you any because they don’t want to read your tiny, tiny writing?”

Memories of the person whose role I had been forced into filled my mind with the answer.  “Yes, but I can’t do it,” I told her.  “I have to use a special tablet that’s still in my locker.”

“Damn, that sucks,” she replied blankly.  “Probably should’ve grabbed it before trying to get the attention of someone a thousand times your size, huh?”  From her voice, I could tell Fulda had more sympathy for a hangnail than for me.  “Maybe they’ll take pity on you for being so small and pathetic and give you a pass.  I mean, I wouldn’t, but they might.  If I were your teacher, you’d be one missed assignment away from getting squashed.”

“Sounds like you’d be great at it,” I muttered sarcastically under my breath.

“I heard that, pipsqueak!”  Stunned, I took a step back as Fulda explained.  “I can hear everything you say and see you all the time if something isn’t blocking you from my eyes.  So don’t think you can mouth off or flip me off or something just because you’re the size of a particularly small insect, because I’ll know.  If you think I’m rough with my toy now, try being a little shit and see where it gets you.”  Her point thoroughly made, I stayed quiet while Fulda continued with her homework.

Four hours, three books, and several notebook pages later, she was finished.  Trapped on her nightstand at my diminutive size, however, I had nothing to do for all that time.  There were only so many times I could pace around the ledge, and aside from the lamp there was nothing I could reach.  This was the only way to spend my free time now, and since I was supposed to be her entertainment, I doubted Fulda would provide me with any.

Absent anything else to do I looked at Fulda, and after a few minutes I realized there was nothing I would rather do.  Her braided auburn hair spilled down her back, with a small curtain of bangs tickling her thin eyebrows.  I could get lost in her magnificent blue eyes both literally and figuratively, and the bridge of her round, aquiline nose was so wide I would have to climb it like a majestic redwood tree.  Thick, full lips subtly moved as she silently read to herself, the room’s light glinting off her pink lip gloss, and a small cleft in her chin looked about as deep as I was tall.

Fulda was active and spent a lot of time outside, leaving her skin a light, golden brown that went perfectly with her hair.  On most people her breasts would have been huge, but with her tremendous frame they looked about average, and her too-small tank top made them look larger.  Her biceps were the size of hills for me, and had I not been shrunken, her thighs would have been as big around as my head.  Her legs were so long that, were they stretched out, her size 16 feet would hang off the foot of the bed, and her toned calves were large enough for me to build a small house on.  Up and down her 6’8” body the long, lithe curves of her powerful muscles were evident, and for me she was an expansive, hilly landscape.

It was not a surprise I would find her stunningly beautiful; I had designed Fulda to be my ideal woman.  I would hardly be the first writer to become infatuated or even fall in love with one of their characters, either.  As far as I knew, however, I was the only one to ever become their character’s plaything.  Fulda had me completely under her thumb, and with how much she had shrunk me that was not just a saying.  She owned her creator, even if she did not know it, and had decided he was just another toy to her.  Though I had given her life, that would not stop her from snuffing mine out should the mood strike her.

“How long have you been staring at me?”  Fulda’s rumbling voice jolted me out of my reverie to find her looming over me.  Her face was close enough that I could see the tiny patterns in the skin stretched across the bridge of her nose, and her eyes seemed to stare at me from opposite directions.  Trying to decide which gigantic eye to look at, I stammered for an answer while her eyebrows scrunched together.  “I asked you a question, insect.”

I was still stumbling over my words, but when Fulda narrowed her eyes from impatience I found motivation to sort myself out.  “A couple hours,” I admitted, still not sure where I should look.

“A couple hours?” Fulda repeated, derision dripping from her powerful voice.  “You’re like those cowards who want to talk to me but can’t work up the nerve.  Guess what I do with them?”  I could guess, but she was going to tell me anyway.  “That’s right, I shrink them real small so they’ll have more of me to look at.  Though,” a quick laugh interrupted her and blasted me back with air, “I already shrank you.  I could shrink you some more, but then you wouldn’t be much fun to play with.”

“You can shrink me more?” I asked.  I knew she could – there was no limit to how much she could shrink someone – I was just surprised she had figured that out already.

“Is there a tiny echo in here?” Fulda teased and grinned.  “I can make you however small I want.  I can make you smaller than a speck of dust.  I can shrink you until a grain of sand is a mountain to you.  I can shrink you so the milk in my bowl of cereal is an entire ocean for you.  I can shrink you until my eye is the size of an entire planet.  I can make you so small that, for all practical purposes, you cease to exist.”  As she detailed how small she could make me, I imagined how she would look from those sizes – in fact, I had described her from those points of view before – and felt a shameful twinge as blood rushed to my penis.  “I can play with your size later, though.”

Fulda’s eyes widened with a sudden realization.  “That reminds me!” she shouted, and I clutched my ears to protect them from the sudden explosion of sound.  “I never checked how small you are!  I’ve been waiting years to see just how small you got, and I almost smashed you before I found out!”

The nightstand rumbled when Fulda opened a drawer, and loud rustling assaulted my ears while she rummaged around in it.   After a couple seconds she pulled her hand back out, grasping a ruler with several marks in pencil around the one-inch mark.  She flipped it so it was vertical, with zero at the bottom, and stood it on the nightstand, flush with the lamp.  While I watched her set it up, she placed a pencil that came up to my waist beside the ruler, then the wooden plateau quaked when she closed the drawer.

Fulda placed her left hand on the nightstand and pointed her index finger at me.  It was tremendous for a finger, with each section longer than I was tall, and a short, manicured fingernail that came up to my neck.  It rushed forward, and before I could react the tip of Fulda’s finger crashed into my body, pushing me backward.  I was still stumbling away when she followed up, driving me further toward the center of the nightstand.  With one last shove I nearly fell over, and the only thing that kept me on my feet was running into the strip of wooden ruler against the lamp.

As I reeled from her pushing me around I tried to see exactly how tall I stood, but all I could see were the black notches carved into the wood. Fulda’s hand closed with me again until her fingertip rested against my body, jolting my body straight.  With a negligible amount of force she pinned me against the ruler, then stretched another finger to hold the it in place.  “Act like you’ve got some pride and stand up straight, bug” she commanded, and I complied as best I could.  “Precision matters, and every millimeter counts.”

I stood perfectly still with my back as straight as I get it while Fulda knelt until her eyes were level with the plateau’s surface.  Her other hand came toward me, pointing the sharpened spike of a pencil at my head, and her finger holding me in place was the only thing that kept me from running in fear.  The pencil lead set down atop my head and I clenched my eyes shut to keep from shaking.  There was a loud scratching while Fulda marked another notch on the ruler, then I was shoved forward when she pulled the ruler from behind me.

Once I recovered, I opened my eyes to see Fulda looking at the ruler with a huge smile, showing off the top row of her straight white teeth.  “Wow!” she exclaimed and glanced between me and the ruler several times.  “I knew you were small, but you are small!  Not only are you not even an inch tall, you’re barely half an inch!”  She threw her head back and cackled, a loud crack that left my ears ringing.  “I can’t even imagine how fucking gigantic I look to you!”  Her words trailed off into another fit of laughter, and I was helpless to do anything about the gusts of wind and loud booms blasting me from her mouth.

Fulda took a deep breath to steady herself but was still smiling broadly when she turned to look at me.  “I don’t suppose your parents kept records of your shrinking, did they?  You know, stuff like height charts, doctor’s visits, dated comparison photos showing just how small you’re getting?”  I looked up at her blankly and she elaborated.  “Photos would be perfect, really.  Whenever I shrink people it always happens so fast, I don’t get to enjoy watching them dwindle until they’re almost nothing!”

“No, nothing like that,” I squeaked while my character’s memories unraveled.  “They weren’t exactly proud their only son was shrinking like they would be if I were growing.  Aside from renovating the house so no one would step on me, they pretty much acted like it wasn’t happening.  They even stopped taking me to the doctor once it was clear there was no medical reason for me to be getting smaller.”

“Oh.  Bummer.”  Fulda exhaled sharply, blowing a few strands of her bangs upward.  “It’s just, last time I saw you, you were two feet tall, pretty short to me, but absolutely huge compared to you now!  I was so disappointed when you got pulled from school.  Every day I looked forward to finding you to see how much of a shrimp you were and how puny you looked to me!  I would watch you climbing into that desk they brought in from the elementary school and wonder ‘Just how small will he get?  Shorter than my foot?  Shorter than my ankles?  Will I be able to put him in my pocket?  Is he going to stop?’  Then one day you were gone, and there’s a big gap in my data between then and today!”

“The scientific community mourns the loss, I’m sure.”

“What did I tell you about mouthing off, bug?”  I gulped, realizing my mistake too late.  “I’ll let this one slide since I’m so happy about how minuscule you are, but in the future I won’t be as kind.”  Fulda stood back to her gargantuan height, shaking the nightstand when she pushed off it.  She took a moment to relish towering over me, then turned and walked away.  The whole room trembled with each of her steps, then she was out the door, leaving me alone on the vast wooden plateau of her nightstand.

When Fulda returned, her hair was down so it flowed over her shoulders, and she looked genuinely pleased with her situation.  She turned toward me, making the room shake with every step again, then stood to revel in looming over me once more.  Once she had her fill for the moment, she crouched so her eyes were merely a few inches above the plateau and stared down at me.

“I’m getting ready for bed,” she began, her rumbling voice making my whole body tremble, “so it’s time to put you in your toy box.”  Before I knew what was happening her hand was upon me, with her long, slender fingers stretching further than I could see looking up.  Her fingers curled inward, striking the wooden surface with a loud thud when they connected with it.  The tip of Fulda’s middle finger struck my back, lifting me into the air, and drove me into the middle of her palm as the rest of her fingers settled around me.

Inside the darkness of Fulda’s fist, the only way I could tell where I was going was extrapolation.  Her hand swung forward and back, making my insides lurch with each movement, and she turned sharply with each corner.  The discomfort never lasted long enough for me to be sick, nor could I acclimate to it.  Whatever Fulda had determined was her toybox must be inside her room, since she did not leave it, but I was yet to find anything that could fit that description.

Fulda’s knuckles thudded against something after a sharp descent, and I felt that my journey was at an end for now.  Her fingers clattered against the surroundings as they opened, releasing me from my prison inside her fist, until I rolled down her finger and onto a plastic floor.  The humongous hand withdrew, leaving me alone in my new surroundings, though Fulda lingered as she crouched over me.

It looked like I was in a bedroom designed for tiny people, though it did not quite line up.  The knobs on the armoire were so high I would have to jump to reach them, and the shirts left out on the floor were large enough to be blankets.  A trunk pressed against the window was tall enough I would need to jump to open it, and the window only gave me a view of the ceiling.  When I reached the bed, I found it was positively gigantic to me.  My eyes only reached the bottom of the sideboard.

“Fulda, everything in here’s too big for me,” I called out, making the titaness pause as she moved away.  “I would have to literally climb into bed here.  Do you have anything more appropriate for my size?”

Her head turned back toward me, and I felt he oppressive gaze of her eyes as she smiled.  “What, did you think I’d build a house especially for your tiny ass?” she asked.  “It’s my dollhouse from when I was a kid, it’s that or nothing.”  Considering that nothing would almost certainly mean being squished, I accepted my lot of sleeping in Fulda’s tiny yet huge dollhouse.

Fulda, however, was not done teasing me.  “Are you telling me a dollhouse is too big for you?  Are you too puny to fit into a doll’s bed?  That’s pathetic.  You’re pathetic.  Honestly, this whole thing sounds like a ‘you’ problem, and it’s keeping me from my beauty sleep.”  Before I could get another word in Fulda stood up, then walked away and hit the light switch.  The shaking floor tracked her movements, then there was a loud thud when she fell onto her mattress.  I heard soft moans and rustling cloth for a while until she got settled, then everything went silent.

Without her watchful eye to mock me for how short she had made me, I grabbed onto one of the bed’s legs and started climbing.  I could not do it in a conventional wa, and had to spread my arms and legs along the flat surfaces presented to gain any traction.  Little by little I made my way up, digging my fingers into the wood grain for extra grip as I went.  It was nothing more than a doll bed, and I still difficulty reaching the top.

Even then, I did not feel entirely safe.  I grabbed the upper reach of the blanket and pulled back, churning my legs to make the massive surface move along with me.  I had only managed to make it budge a few inches, but that was enough.  The blanket’s fold turned outward, falling onto me, and I raced toward the nearest edge.  When I reached it I climbed upon the pillow and ran up the resulting slope until I could poke my head out while the rest of the blanket covered me.

“Good night, Fulda!” I called out, and got no answer.  In fact, the only response I got was her loud snore.  No matter how excited she was, I realized, she would not be very excited about me.  I was certainly not worth interrupting her beauty sleep.  No matter how I phrased it to myself, she was the giantess in charge of everything, and I was nothing more than an insect to her, subject to whatever changes she decided to make.

I woke up to the house shaking and repeated thuds from something smashing into the walls.  “Time to get up, man-bug!” Fulda boomed, and I threw the covers off and hopped out of bed.  Expecting to land on my feet, I was surprised when I did not even get clear of the mattress to land on the floor.  That was when I remembered this was a different house, a different Fulda, and I was still shrunken.  This was normally how Fulda woke me up when she wanted to play, but the one I was used to have never been this aggressive about it.

As I walked to the edge of the mattress to hop down, the house shuddered from two loud thumps on either side.  With a loud plastic squeal the roof was torn off, and I looked up to see Fulda holding it between her hands.  She set it to the side, and with a grimace her cold blue eyes stared down at me.  “How are you not even out of bed yet?” she asked, exasperated.  “We’re going to be late for school!  Or did you think you’d get to skip now that you’re my toy?”

I reached the edge of the mattress and climbed down to the frame, but before I could jump the rest of the way down Fulda’s voice rang out again.  “I don’t have time for this.  You’re still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, but I don’t think anyone will notice.  I’d be surprised if they notice you at all.”  She reached a hand into the dollhouse and extended her thumb and forefinger toward me.  Instead of setting them around me like I expected, she precisely dug at the back collar of my shirt until there was enough slack for her to grip.  The tips of her thumb and index finger pinched around my collar, and in a sudden rush of movement she yanked me out of the house.

Fulda held me a few inches from her face, her pink lip gloss glinting while her huge blue eyes stared at me.  “Good morning, little man,” she purred.  “There are going to be a few changes in your daily routine, and you’re going to get used to them if you want to keep living.”  With that ultimatum she stood, giving me another burst of movement so intense it felt like my stomach dropped entirely out of my body.  While I dangled helplessly in front of her face, she batted me with her free hand to make me swing more intensely and started walking toward the door.

I felt every single one of Fulda’s steps intensely, the vibrations running through the length of her body and into mine.  It ensured I would never stop swinging as long as she was moving, as the waves kept my body swaying beneath her fingers.  When she walked down the stairs it got particularly bad, with the added energy from each footfall jolting my body harder.  In order to keep from getting motion sick I focused on one of her eyes, though the withering glare made me wish I had something else to look at.

Gina and Jessica were waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.  Jessica started first, letting out a long wolf whistle as she stood.  “Look at Fulda, coming downstairs with her new boyfriend!” she called out.  “Not even trying to hide how horny she is for the bug!”

“Do you want me to drive today?” Gina offered.  “I’m guessing you didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”  What?  Gina can’t legally drive.  The Fulda managing this aspect of my universe must have made some additional changes, funnily enough about things that had been bothering me, too.  It was yet to be seen how that would affect her knowledge of shrinking people, or her skill at learning it.

“I’m plenty rested, you fucking pervs,” Fulda replied, walking across the living room to gather her things.  I was thrown around wildly while she slipped her arm into the sleeve of her letter jacket, but her fingers kept their tight grip on my collar.  After a brief sojourn through the darkness of her jacket, I was relieved to come out into the bright light again, even if all I could see was the dark blue wall of fabric.

“Of course she is, Gina!” Jessica interjected.  “She’s probably worried he’d get lost in there.  Don’t worry sis, there are no obstacles to true love, and I’m sure you’ll find a way to be physically intimate with your bite-sized boyfriend!”

“Are you two quite done?” Fulda growled as she slipped her hand into her jacket’s pocket.  Her fingers guided me toward the lowest corner, and once my feet touched the fabric she let go and withdrew her hand.  She pressed her thumb against the opening, and with a loud snap the button closed behind me.  “Like I told you yesterday, he is not my boyfriend!  He’s just a tiny man I found in the hallway and didn’t want to leave him out where someone might accidentally step on him.”  “Accidentally” being the operative word, considering she had purposefully stepped on me several times last night.

“Sure, we’re just razzing you, sis,” Gina answered.

“Yeah, we’re just having fun,” Jessica added.

In the darkness of Fulda’s jacket pocket, I could not say I had much fun.  There was nothing even interesting to look at aside from the balls of lint that had formed in the corners.  The only light coming in was a dull, thin stream through the opening of her pocket, but it was enough to tell me I was not missing much.  The only change was the persistent bouncing of her gait, and even that dropped off once she sat in her car.

Once the engine of her BMW roared to life, I settled in for a whole lot of nothing.  I sat there, blasted by pop-punk music while her sisters tonelessly sang along.  No matter how much I tried to escape into the depths of Fulda’s pocket, there was nowhere for me to go, and I had to endure the artless, tone-deaf additions from the other people in the car.  Thankfully it did not take very long, only about twenty minutes, and once she cut the music that was the end of the sing-along, too.

The bouncing of Fulda’s gait was resumed as she walked into the school, tossing me up and down into the corner I had slid into.  “You gonna eat lunch with your new boyfriend today?” Gina asked.

“Or will you eat him with your lunch?”

“He’s so small I doubt she’d even notice!”

“Will you two shut up about that already?” Fulda hissed.  “It’s obnoxious at home, but that shit’s how rumors get started out here.  If anyone asks me if I’m dating the tiny student, you’ll both be picking your teeth up of the ground, got it?” 

“Yes, Fulda,” her sisters sheepishly replied in unison. 

After a few seconds, Gina piped up, “Well if you’re not going to date him, can I?”

Fulda already sounded exasperated.  “No, you can’t.  As far as everyone else is concerned he’s just another student here, but you both know he’s really nothing more than my toy.”

“Yeah, your boy toy,” Jessica interjected, snickering.

“What did I just say?  Gina, in like a month you’ll be seven feet tall or something, I’m sure you can find some guy with a tall woman fetish who doesn’t fit underneath your fingernail.”

“Wait, what’s that about a tall woman fetish?” Gina asked.  “There are guys who chase after tall women?”

“Yeah, lots of them!” Fulda answered, laughing.  “My little toy here is one for sure, he loves it when I tower over him.  Just find a short guy who always seems to just be looking away from you and it’ll be easy to make him into your little toy.”

After a brief silence I heard the doors open, then Fulda suddenly stopped.  “You two have a good day, I’ve got to take care of something real quick.”  After a moment the jolt of her gait started again, and Fulda went through another door.  Whatever she had planned, I doubted it would bode well for me.

“Good morning, Miss Stein!  Do you have an appointment this morning?  There’s no reason I can think of for you to meet with the principal…”

“No, but something just came up and I need to see Mrs. Howard immediately.  Is she available?”

“She will be for the next ten minutes, would you like me to get you in now?”

“Yes, I’d like that, Miss Fine.”  After a quick buzz the jostling inside Fulda’s pocket resumed, though it only lasted a half-dozen steps.  When it stopped, she undid the button on her pocket with a loud snap, then reached in with a pair of fingers set to pinch something.  Instead of grabbing me, however, she grabbed the lining of her pocket yanked it inside out.  The unfurling cloth caught me as it straightened, pushing me toward the outside world.  When it was fully extended, I dropped out of Fulda’s pocket and landed in the middle of her cupped hand.

“And how can I help one of our brightest students today?” the principal asked.  Though I did not recognize the voice, the character I was inhabiting did.  I got strong memories of pleading my case before her, practically begging to be let back into a regular school, and insisting that I would be okay.  The final argument I had needed was a threat to invoke the ADA if they did not let me back in, and that was enough to get her to grudgingly accept.

Fulda’s hand rushed forward and I was pressed against the heel of her palm while the ceiling tiles above blurred together.  The movement stopped as abruptly as it had started, and Fulda flattened her palm.  She slowly rotated her wrist to the left, and when the slope became to steep I tumbled out of her hand and onto the faux-wood desk beneath me.  “I’m here to talk about him.”

I turned my attention to the principal as she looked down at me.  Her large, dark brown eyes were behind a pair of narrow, rectangular glasses, and there was the smallest hint of crows feet in the corner of her eyes.  She had her chestnut hair pulled back in a bun, hiding the odd streak of gray, and her red lips were pulled tight as she regarded me.  A dark blue blazer helped square her shoulders, and a golden lapel pin drew attention away from her sky-blue blouse.  As she looked at me, she kept her hands placed firmly on the desk, as though she were terrified of accidentally touching me.

“Yes, our returning student with the exceptionally rare shrinking disorder,” she confirmed.  “Quite the brave man, and an inspiration to us all.  How does he affect you?”

“He’s in tremendous danger.”  Mrs. Howard was unmoved, so Fulda elaborated.  “Yesterday I saw him walking around in the hallways, right in the open, with no protection.  Someone could have stepped on him without even knowing, and I would hate to lose such a bright mind so young.”  She was laying it on thick.  I would be sure to remind her of how highly she spoke of me next time I was allowed to speak.

“Everyone’s aware of his condition, and he’s been attending this school for several months without an issue,” the principal replied.  “What makes you so sure he’s in danger?”

“It’s only a matter of time!” Fulda exclaimed.  “Just compare any object on your desk to him and you’ll find it’s significantly larger than he is.  Now imagine how big the shoe of an average student here is, let alone someone with gigantic feet, like a size 16.  All it takes is one inattentive, sleep-deprived student in the morning, and he’s just a stain on the floor.”

“I see your point.  What do you propose?”

“I would like to be his guardian at school.  We have all the same classes, we’re just on different schedules.  If you change his to match mine, I could carry him from class to class, making sure nothing happens to him, and ensure he’s kept safe his whole time here.”

“You realize I just saw you pull him out of your pocket, a decidedly unsafe place for someone of his stature.”

“Mrs. Howard, that was just a temporary arrangement to get him safely to your office.  I can guarantee you that, should I become his designated guardian at school, he will be kept outside of pockets and off the floor aside from when he needs to access his special homework device.”

The principal let out a soft hum and glanced between me and the titaness looming over me.  “He was very insistent that he not be treated any differently than any other student,” she said, and I remembered those words.  “I’d have to review the recordings, but I believe he said that he didn’t want exactly what you’re proposing.”

“I mean no offense to him, I assure you, but I don’t think he knew what he was getting into when he said those things.  He’d only been around his family for years, and must have forgotten what it was like to be around hundreds of gigantic people who may or may not even know he’s there.”  Mrs. Howard’s lips pulled to the side as she considered Fulda’s case.  “Please.  He needs someone looking out for him.  I’m in the lead for valedictorian, captain of the volleyball team, cheer squad, and physics club.  He’ll be safe with me.”

The principal looked pensive as she glanced down to me.  “It’s up to you.  Do you want Fulda to be your guardian while attending school here?  Keep in mind that this would mean following her schedule and going wherever she goes, whether you want to or not.  Your ability to roam freely would be severely curtailed.  In a non-legally binding sense, you would be hers within these walls.”

I looked back at Fulda, whose cold eyes were locked expectantly on me.  If I said no, she would find me later and make me pay for defying her.  Instead of writing reality so she did what I wanted, she could now bend me to her will with just a look.  “Yes, I agree to that.”  Fulda smiled, and the principal looked completely non-plussed by it.  “Come to think of it, I should’ve brought it up sooner.  I’ve had several close calls just walking around, and I would like to spend as little time on the ground as possible.”  There were no memories from my assumed character like that, but I figured a bit of embellishment would help sell my supposed change of heart.

Mrs. Howard looked between Fulda and I several times.  “Well, I guess that settles it.  Now, Miss Stein, I hope you understands this means you and you alone bear responsibility for him?  If something should happen to him here, you will be considered responsible.  If he’s seen outside of your arm’s reach, you had better have an explanation good enough to keep me from expelling you.  Am I clear?”

“Of course, Mrs. Howard.”  Fulda reached her fingers down and pinched the back of my collar tightly.  “Come on, little guy.  Let’s get to our first class.”  She easily plucked me off the principal’s desk, then the world blurred when she turned around.  I swung along with her gait, the minute shocks that reached me from her footfalls causing me to bounce beneath her fingers.  Wind rushed past me when she opened the door, then she continued through the receptionist’s office into the hallway.  Once the door clicked shut, Fulda’s eyes darted around before settling back on me.

“Did you hear that, little guy?” she said, her booming voice filled with guile.  Far below me her lips curled into a smirk, and her eyes narrowed on either side of me.  “You’re mine here, too.  Everyone here already knows you as the tiny student so I can’t outright smash you here, but you can’t run to anyone else for help, either.  At the end of the day, you’re always coming home to be my toy.”

For the first time since I ended up in her story, I smiled.  “What I heard is that everyone will know you’re responsible for me now, so if something happens to me you’ll be the first person they look at.  You’ve made sure I’m perfectly safe.”

“Is that what you think happened?” Fulda replied.  She swiftly batted me with her index finger, making me swing wildly back and forth in her grip while she spoke.  “That’s adorable!  I shouldn’t be surprised you’re so short-sighted, considering how short you are, so I’ll explain.  No one besides my sisters know I have you at home, so I can do anything I want to you there.  When I finally get bored of you, I’ll just tell Mrs. Howard that you stopped showing up and act very concerned.  You’re stuck with me for the rest of your life.”

“And if I run away anyway?  You’ll get expelled and I’ll be free.”

“I’m not worried about that.”  Fulda started walking through the hall, causing me to sway with her strides while I swung back and forth.  “You’re not going to have much opportunity to run, let alone anywhere to run to.  Plus, even you have to know that you’ll probably fail, and then you’ll learn there are worse things I can do to a tiny man besides step on them.  Admit it, there’s nothing you can do.  You’re helpless.”

I could not deny it anymore.  My creation had outmaneuvered me once again, leaving me even more under her control.  “Yeah, you beat me, Fulda.”  It was self-evident, but I knew she wanted to hear me say it.

“I beat you the second I saw you on the floor, you little idiot,” Fulda responded.  “I control you now, and I want you to acknowledge it.”

I gulped down what little pride I had left and looked into one of her eyes.  “You own me, Fulda,” I said hoarsely.  “I am your property.”

“That’s better.”  She inched her thumb and forefinger down, engulfing me with her fingertips, until they completely encased me.  When her fingers covered me she dropped her hand back down to her side, and I felt light-headed from the sudden drop.  I reeled, and the vast arcs of her arm swinging gave me no time to recover as she continued her way through the corridor.  My only consolation amid the constant movement and baking body heat was the soft cushioning between her fingers, which was still uncomfortable from her even lightly pinching me.

When Fulda finally released me, she dropped me on the immense, flat wood surface of her desk.  Before I could stand she sat down in it, making the whole structure shake from the impact of her gigantic frame.  I stared up at her, marveling at her humongous face looming over me and the sizable chest protruding from her body.  Her blue eyes flicked down to me, and as she stared, I wondered whether she would treat me like a person with her peers watching.

“Why don’t you stop staring at me and get to your desk?” she said, pointing behind me.  It was barely civil, but at least she was not proclaiming her ownership over me again.  I followed where she was pointing and saw a tiny desk set up on the edge of hers, several times smaller than the eraser lying next to it.  Not wanting to anger someone with fingernails larger than I was, I started the trek across her desk toward mine.

When I reached my seat, I immediately noticed the dark blue wall that rose several inches in front of it.  My view was totally blocked by the chair in front of me to such an extend that no amount of boosting could help me see over.  I began pushing it toward the corner so I could see past it, but Fulda set a finger down in my path, blocking me.  I let go, but she still leaned in close enough that her lips were mere inches above my head, fully engulfing me in her shadow.

“Do you think you know better than me, little man?” she harshly whispered, and H shook my head.  “Then leave the desk where it is.”  To avoid agitating her further I turned around and planted my butt in the seat.  Satisfied, Fulda seat back in her chair and withdrew her hand, and I stared at the blank blue wall in front of me.

A few minutes later, I saw a cap of straight blond hair peak over the wall.  As her crystal clear blue eyes and pale skin came into view, I got a better guess of who it was, and the broad, square shoulders confirmed it.  Victoria was making her appearance much earlier than she should have, another one of Fulda’s changes to the cast.  Apparently, she figured simply introducing her near the end was not good enough for her.

Victoria stopped beside the desk and lowered herself into the chair.  With a thud her back came to a rest against the blue wall in front of me, and I knew it would be useless to try and see past her.  Even if I could see around her chair, the tremendous white tapestry of her shirt would still block me.

A shadow fell over me, and I looked up just in time to gasp.  A thick curtain of blond hair was falling right toward me, fast enough there was no chance to escape.  Thinking quickly, I crouched down and buried my head in my arms to protect my face.  Thousands of blond hairs thudded onto the desk around me, a prelude to the tremendous thwack of a thick, golden lock of it landing on me.  Victoria’s hair drove me to the ground, knocking me prone and making my arms splay out.

Getting beaten up by hair was a new level of humiliation for me.  I laid there for a few moments, feeling sorry for myself before getting back up.  When I was back in my chair, I did not see how I would even be able to use it.  Thick strands of blond hair covered the seat and desk, pouring off it onto the surface below me to make a long, straight rug.  If that were not bad enough, every time Victoria moved her head even the slightest amount her hair whipped and curled around, throwing me around in my chair. 

I was not going to deal with this if I did not have to.  “Hey, Victoria?” I called up, hoping she could hear me. 

Surprisingly she turned around, and her hair pushed me out of my seat.  As she turned her hair dragged me along with it until I was mercifully stopped by Fulda’s eraser.  When she was turned almost all the way around, she glanced down and by some miracle spotted me amidst her hair.  “Hey there, little guy!” she boomed, smiling.  “What’s up?  Well, except for me, of course.  And everyone else in the world.  Um.  How’s my favorite tiny student doing?”

“I’m fine, could you –“

“He just wanted to say hi,” Fulda butted in.  “He’s very excited to be sitting with us now.”

“Oh.  Hi!”  Victoria waved enthusiastically down to me.  “Good to see you’re finally making friends!”  I waved back, understanding that I would not get to speak to her further.  Fulda had decided she would be my mouthpiece as well as my supposed protector.  The blond titaness turned back around, the thin strands of her hair whipping me into the air as she spun.  I landed back among a pile of the silky strands, and blindly groped my way through them to get back to my desk.

The lesson starting was not the end of my torments.  Fulda decided I was the perfect focus for her fidgeting.  Whenever she felt bored, she would begin prodding me with the tip of her finger, or grabbing the back of my chair and leaning it back as far as it could go.  When it finally toppled over, she laid that same finger on top of me and held me down until I had squirmed sufficiently for her.  Between Fulda and the thick layer of hair around me, I was not even sure what class I had just spent an hour in.

The school day did not change much from my first experience with it.  Fulda put me somewhere I would not be able to see, hair engulfed me more often than not, and Fulda played with me when she felt bored.  If I tried to complain, Fulda simply talked over me, so I learned quickly enough not to raise the issue.  As bad as it was, however, I knew it could have been worse: she always put me on her desk rather than inside her shoe, for instance, so I did not worry about getting crushed.

The next time my feet touched tile was at the end of the day, when I was getting my special tablet out of my locker.  I was in Fulda’s shadow, and worked as quickly as I could to pull out my stuff.  Her two ginormous Converse were on either side of me, and her colossal body offered me as much protection as I could hope for.

“Hey, Fulda!” someone called out in the distance.  The shadows around me shifted, and Fulda’s enormous feet moved to the side.  I quickly grabbed my tablet and slammed the door shut, then spun around.  A humongous black ballet flat stepped into view, even longer than the familiar Converse that constantly threatened to annihilate me.  Looking up, I saw flesh-toned nylon stockings several stories up that went on to wrap around long, sinewy legs hundreds of feet tall.  When I reached the top of the titaness, I saw a deluge of dark brown hair pouring over sturdy shoulders, the same shade as her brown eyes.  Significantly, she was looking down as she addressed Fulda, and quite a bit down, too.  “You’re still hosting tonight, right?”

“Of course I am,” Fulda replied.  “The whole crew’ll be there.”

“Awesome.”  Anni – the only girl in the school taller than Fulda – adjusted a sucker in her mouth.  “Need me to bring anything?”

“Just yourself,” Fulda replied, clutching her stack of books to her chest.  “Trust me, I’ve got more than enough to get us more messed up than we have any right to be.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”  Anni adjusted her sucker again, but this time it fell out of her mouth.  She reached to snatch it out of the air, but as it toppled end over end it evaded her grasp.  The sucker landed on the tile with a loud crack, and to my horror started rolling toward me.  I looked for somewhere to run, but between the enormous metal wall behind me and Fulda’s tremendous foot, there was nowhere to go.  Although I tried to press myself against the locker the red, wet ball of sugar still rolled over me, and I became attached to its sticky surface.

I was not on the floor much longer.  Anni grabbed the sucker’s stem between two fingers and plucked it back up, taking me along with it.  Legs and abs whirred by in a blur as she lifted it to her face, and I felt severely disoriented from the sharp ascent.  When my senses returned to me, I was looking up at Anni’s gargantuan face, her rounded nose perfectly between her huge brown eyes.  My stomach sank when it dawned on me that she was holding me level with her lips.

“Five second rule,” Anni declared, then her jaw fell open.  Her long, pink tongue shot over her bottom lip and laid flat, providing a wide landing area for the sucker.  As I sped toward her mouth I let out a piercing shriek, knowing it was my only chance to get her attention.  If I went in her mouth, I knew Anni would end up eating me.

When I was just about to contact her tongue, the speeding sucker stopped.  Anni’s tongue retracted, and her thin lips smiled while she let out a loud, awkward laugh.  “Hey!  What’re you doing here, little guy?”

“I see you met my locker neighbor!” Fulda answered for me.  “I’m kind of looking out for him since, as you can see, he’s really too small to take care of himself.”

“Yeah, I can tell.  Be more careful down there!  I was like, half a second away from eating you.”  Instead of going through the trouble of prying me off the sucker, Anni simply placed the handle in Fulda’s hand and let go.  “Say, if you’re looking out for him, does that mean he’ll be at the party tonight?”

“It certainly does,” Fulda replied, slowly pulling the sucker toward her, and Anni’s smile widened.

“Well, I certainly look forward to seeing him there.”

“Awfully bold of you to presume you’ll be able to see him,” Fulda joked, and I got trapped between two sources of booming laughter.  Anni turned and walked away, and Fulda started looking for something to wrap around the still-wet sucker.

No sooner had Anni left than we were joined by Fulda’s sisters.  They stood as though to block Fulda and looked down at the candy in her hand, a rather unusual sight.  Simultaneously their eyes found me, and they jumped over each other to see who could make the first joke.

“What you got there, sis?” Jessica said.  “Boyfriend on a stick?”

“It’s so she can make out with him easier,” Gina added.  “Otherwise, she’ll spend half her time kissing the carpet.”

“I thought I told you two to cut that shit out,” Fulda responded.  “At school, at least.”

“Tell you what,” Gina began, “we’ll stop joking about this man-shaped speck of dust being your boyfriend at school if you let us come to your party tonight.”

“You’re joking.”

“We’re not,” Jessica answered.  “If there’s a party in our house, we should be invited, too.”

“Besides, we get along great with your friends!  And Anni’s so cool and tall…”

“Fine, you can come!” Fulda agreed, then let out a loud sigh.  “Now, do either of you have a tissue?  I don’t want to get sucker gunk inside my pocket.”

Once Jessica handed her a tissue, it was quickly wrapped around the sucker’s head, covering me in the soft white paper.  Everything took on a ghostly light through it, though I was not able to see much for long.  After she made sure it was firmly stuck, Fulda deposited the sucker into her jacket pocket, consigning me to darkness until she remembered I was still there.

That evening, Fulda collected me from the oversized dollhouse before going down for the party.  She had spent several hours getting ready, making sure her hair was immaculately braided and the house in almost perfect order, before deciding everything was presentable.  I did what I could to gaze at her while she worked, but since the windowsills were significantly above my eye level, I had needed to create a makeshift staircase out of what was lying around.   It was tenuous and unstable, like to topple over if Fulda so much as stepped too heavily beside it, but it allowed me to watch her perfect form moving to and fro.

The small hill I had made immediately attracted Fulda’s attention, and she let out an ear-cracking laugh when she saw it.  “Let me get this straight,” she began when she finally got control of herself.  “You’re too fucking puny to see out the window of a dollhouse, so you pushed stuff twice your size just so you could watch me have nothing to do with you?”  She laughed again, and I flinched away while she finished.  “I don’t know if that’s creepy or slavish dedication, but one thing’s for sure: you’ve got it bad for me.”  When her laughter resumed, I became aware of how fully aroused I was.

In most circumstances, I would say that I was not to blame, but this was an extraordinary situation.  I was at fault here, of course, but even then it was not so simple.  I had made Fulda as my perfect woman – my perfect giantess, to be more precise, since she rarely went a chapter where she was not perceived as such.  It was also true that I was simply on the receiving end of what I had made her do to so many other men created explicitly for that purpose.  However, even when I reminded myself of all this, I could not deny the hold she had over me.  No matter how hard I tried to resist the call, my eyes were always drawn back toward her, no matter how much I had to put into it.

Fulda started to reach into the dollhouse, but once her hand crossed the line where the ceiling would be she stopped.  “I never thought I’d have to ask this question,” she muttered, “but you’re such a weird tiny person.  If I take you to this party, do you think you’ll be able to keep it in your pants?  You’ll be the only guy there amid six… I guess you’d probably call them giantesses.  You’re not going to hump their fingers or anything, are you?”

Is that how she thought tiny people physically engaged with giants?  “I can promise, with absolute faith, that I will not hump anyone’s fingers or anything else for the duration of this party.”  No matter how aroused I got, I could still control myself.  “A young, bright mind such as myself should be able to restrain themselves in even the most extreme situations, after all.”

“Aw, you can repeat my own words back to me,” Fulda said mockingly as her hand continued into the house.  “It’s like I have a pet parakeet and a toy in one.  Don’t get too full of yourself though, you’re still firmly in the ‘toy’ category.”  Her fingers descended upon me, and her thumb and forefinger clamped around the back of my collar.  Fulda lifted me out of the dollhouse as though I were a piece of trash and held me between her radiant blue eyes.  From her expression, I could tell she was torn between forced disgust and her desire to flaunt her power over me.

“You might not feel like it, but you’re the luckiest tiny person I’ve ever met,” Fulda said, and her deep voice made my whole body tremble.  “When I go to parties, tiny people either stay in my room or go in my shoe.  Not you, though.  You lucked your way into an invite because everyone already knows you’re the size of a bug.  Is it because Anni specifically asked about you?  Or am I building cover for when I get bored and squash you?”  She swung her free index finger forward, clipping my feet as it went by.  “No one would suspect your best friend, who takes you places and looks out for you.  No one even knows I’m the one who shrank you, they still buy that ‘reverse growth spurt’ crap.” 

I swung wildly from Fulda’s fingers as she descended the stairs, each thundering footfall kicking up a new wave of activity.  Through it all Fulda kept her eyes locked on me, smiling while she watched me get helplessly thrown about by her movement.  We both knew she could stop it by gripping me more tightly, and we also knew she would not.  She liked seeing how utterly powerless I was against her, and how something she never even thought of could throw my body into such turmoil.

At the bottom of the stairs Fulda suddenly halted, and inertia flung me away from her face hard enough that I hit her fingernail with my back.  For the first time in several minutes Fulda’s eyes were off me as she turned her attention to someone behind me.  “Oh, hey you two!” she said, blasting me with warm air from her mouth.  “So glad you could make it!”

“Are we early?” an unfamiliar voice asked.  It sounded like another male student, but Fulda had said I would be the only guy here tonight.  “You said to be here at seven, right?”

“Nope, you’re right on time!” Fulda answered as she moved the hand holding me away from her face.  After a few seconds a broad white surface came into view below me, and Fulda let go of my shirt so I fell onto it.

“What’s that you got there?” the other asked as Fulda brushed her fingers off with each other.

“The tiny student,” Fulda replied simply, taking a step toward them.  “You know the tiny kid, right?”  They both said yes, and she continued speaking.  “Want to know a secret?  I shrank him.”

“Bullshit!” the second replied.  “You can’t shrink people!”

“Guess I’ll have to prove it to you.”  I turned around just in time to see Fulda pointing at the two men, then in an instant they disappeared.  Slowly I approached the ledge and looked toward Fulda’s feet, and sure enough there were two tiny people standing there, dwarfed by the toes of their shoes.  They were too small for me to here, but I see them staring up at her in equal parts terror and amazement.

Fulda knelt and placed a hand on the floor between them, palm up.  “Phones in my palm, now.  Don’t make me ask again.  Smart watch too, Walt.  I know you have one, you were showing it off to everyone on Monday.”  The two rushed to comply, almost knocking each other over as they hurried to toss their devices into her hand.  She laughed at them, making them clutch their ears in a feeble attempt to protect themselves.

Her free hand scrooped them up in one swipe, then Fulda stood.   She walked over to the trash can and dumped their phones inside, mere specks of dust compared to her.  With those disposed of she stepped outside, keeping her fist tightly clenched around them.  When she returned, she had a small blue sedan clutched in her open hand, appropriately sized for the people she had just shrunk.  Without saying a word to me Fulda headed back up the stairs, still gripping the two shrunken men in one hand.

I knew Fulda could shrink people, that was mostly why she existed, and I had described her doing it many times.  Seeing it happen was different, though.  It was faster than I thought, almost instantaneous and over before either knew what was happening.  There was no time for them to stare up in horror as she grew, then have it dawn on them what was really happening.  One second they were full-sized, and the next they were looking up at her shoes.

I also knew what would happen to them.  In the near future they would either be crushed or swallowed by Fulda, for no reason other than they existed near her.  I tried telling myself they weren’t real, they were characters in a story controlled by a future Fulda in a universe I had created, but that did not help.  After all, I lived in this universe now, too, and I could easily share their fate.  If I was real, weren’t they, too?  If I was not in control, did anything separate me from the other characters?

Fulda’s thunderous footsteps on the stairs broke me out of my rumination, and I looked up to watch her finish descending.  She took a moment to square her shoulders before approaching me, then leaned down far enough to rest her hands on her knees.  This was what she had to do to get to eye level with me, and as I stared at the wall of golden brown skin in front of me I tried to decide which of the magnificent eyes I should look at.

“Good news, toy,” Fulda declared, and her eyes narrowed when she smiled.  “I have some other puny man-bugs to deal with before I get to you, so you might live an entire week with me!  Plus, I’m giving you their car.  Have fun driving it around my floor before I smash it for fun.”

“What was that about?” I asked.  “Did you shrink them just for showing up to a party you invited them to?”

Fulda chuckled, and the rush of air from her nose made me stagger backward.  “Ordinarily I’d flick you for that, but I’m pretty proud of it.  Yeah, I did.  Before you came along I was worried I’d be bored this weekend, so I told them to be here way before the party started so I could shrink them and get rid of the evidence.  If they made up a convincing lie, no one will ever know they were here.  Just two more missing people added to the list, and no one will ever believe what really happened to them.”

Before I could reply more footsteps came thundering down the stairs, and I decided not to waste breath that would just be drowned out by the sound.  A few seconds later the towering blond heads of Gina and Jessica appeared on either side of Fulda, flanking her.  They stared down at me for a moment, smirking, then turned their attention to their oldest sister.

“We heard you talking to someone, so we thought the party started,” Jessica said.  “Turns out it’s just you and the tiny kid.  Should we stick around, or do you want some privacy?”

“Yeah, did I hear you say you’re giving him a car?” Gina butted in.  “Leaving the logistics of that aside, do you really expect us to believe you aren’t dating if you’re getting him a car?  You’re not just dating, you’re his sugar momma!”  If she heard that, what else did she hear?  Did she know about Fulda’s ability to shrink people?

“You’re giving him way too much credit,” Fulda replied.  “I got him a matchbox car to help him feel like a normal person his age, it cost a couple bucks, no big deal.  I gave you more than that for foundation last week, does that mean we’re dating, too?”

Gina grinned smugly and crossed her arms.  “Hey, big sis?  Would you mind standing up straight real quick?”

“What, why?”

“Come on, just do it.  It’ll only take a second.”  Fulda rolled her eyes and stood, then turned to face Gina.  “All the way up, like you’ve got a steel rod for a spine.  You know the drill, just like when mom measures you.”  The titanic redhead clapped her hands to her hips and stood as straight as she could, and Gina did the same.

After a few seconds, Gina smiled.  “Eye.  To.  Eye,” she purred.  “At the rate I’m growing, I’ll be taller than you by the end of the party.  Or maybe you’re shrinking, huh, big sis?”  She let that hang in the air for a moment.  If she did not know, this was a hell of a coincidence.  “Either way, you’ll be calling me big sister tomorrow.”

“That’s not what that phrase means.”

“You know, shrinking wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for you,” Gina continued teasing her sister.  “If you shrink real small, you could be with your little bugfriend there.  I’d take care of you both, of course.  Just because you’ll be smaller than my fingernail doesn’t meant you won’t still be my sister!  I’ve got this really nice jar you can live in, it should have plenty of space for you and your tiny lover boy.”  Fulda was seething, and I expected her to take a swing at Gina.

Before the evening could devolve into a fight, however, the doorbell rang.   Fulda pointed a stern finger at Gina, pressing it into her nose, and leaned in close.  “Those are my friends, so listen up: don’t mention any of this shit while they’re here.  Nothing about shrinking, or you outgrowing me, or tiny boyfriends, or giving cars – any of that shit.  Understand me?”

“Sure, sis, I –“

“Do you understand me?”

Gina gulped.  Even if they were the same height, Fulda was much stronger than her.  If push came to shove, she would be begging for mercy within a minute.  “Yes, Fulda,” she said, shaking.  “I understand.”

“Good.”  Fulda lowered her hand and stepped back.  She was shaking, and took a moment to smooth down a loose strand of hair.  “I want this to be a nice, calm night getting hammered with my friends and a tiny man.  You being here is a privilege, remember, and you wanted to be here.”  The doorbell rang again, and Fulda tensed.  “Now.  I’m going to answer the door, and that should give you enough time to get that shit out of your head.  Got it?”  Both of her sisters nodded, and Fulda slowly walked toward the door, keeping her eyes trained on Gina.

By the time all the women were two drinks in they were starting to loosen up.  Fulda had set me on the floor in the middle of the living room, and the six relatively gigantic women decided to form a circle around me.  At Fulda’s insistence, they had taken off their shoes before sitting down, leaving them all in socks or stockings – and, most importantly for me, with no hard soles.  She said it was to help keep the house clean, but I suspected she had something planned.

At first they paid me little mind, but as they got more relaxed they began to include me.  It started with Alyssa looking from her red Solo cup to me and saying, “I just realized one of your guests doesn’t have a drink!”  Fulda looked confused, so she elaborated, “The tiny guy standing in the middle?”

Fulda’s eyes widened like she was surprised to learn I was still there.  “Oh yeah!  I don’t really have any cups small enough for him to use, though, and I don’t think he’d be safe in someone’s drink.”  Naturally, her main concern was my safety, and not that it would be obvious to her audience if she teased me too much before swallowing me.

“Don’t worry, I’ll find something appropriate for him to drink out of.”  Alyssa’s huge gray eyes darted back to me, and she pushed a lock of blond hair behind her right ear.  “What’s your poison, little guy?”

“Gin, I guess,” I answered, shouting so she could hear me.

“One drop of gin coming up for the dinky dude!”  Alyssa unfolded her legs, and the floor shook hard enough to knock me over when her feet slammed onto the ground.  She pushed herself up into a crouch, then stood to her full height.  Even though she was by far the shortest woman here, she was still a titaness to me, and I doubted she could even see me from all the way up there.  After taking a moment to flex toes twice my size she walked toward the kitchen, her socked feet thudding loudly against the carpet with each step.

Things were calming back down when Anni declared, “I remember you now!”  I spun toward the gargantuan brunette fast enough to see her finish another sip of her drink.  “We were in class together for like ten years, then one day we weren’t, it was like you vanished into thin air!”

“I nearly did,” I answered as loudly as I could.  “When everyone else hit their growth spurts freshman year, I hit a shrink spurt or something.  My parents pulled me out of school when I hit two feet and it didn’t show any signs of slowing.”  Anni cocked her head to the side, as though this was all new information for her.  “Don’t you remember that?  Everyone called me ‘The Incredible Shrinking Shorty’ for like a month after they got tired of ‘fun-size.’  You and Fulda used to stand in front of me and stare down for minutes at a time.  I thought you were doing it to tease me, did you really not notice?”

“Honestly, I had no idea!  I mean, I knew you were short, but I didn’t know you were getting shorter.  Then again, I was over seven feet tall by then, so most people just get classified as short to me.”  She stretched a leg toward the center of the circle, her heel landing just short of me with a thump.  I looked up the black nylon-covered obelisk in front of me and idly wondered how long it would take to reach the top.  “Did they ever find out why you shrank?  Was it, like, a genetics or glandular thing?”  Anni flexed her foot over me, making a little bit of slack appear in the stocking beside her instep.

“Nope, no one has any clue.  It just started one day, and thankfully stopped before I shrank into nothing.”

“It’s crazy someone could just start shrinking out of nowhere like that,” Gina butted in.  I looked to her, and she was staring right across the circle at Fulda.  “Do you know of anyone else it’s happened to?  People might shrink like you did all the time and we just never hear about it.”

“I’ve… never heard of it happening to anyone else,” I replied.  “As far as I know, I’m the only person who’s ever shrunk like this.”  Aside from all the characters I’d had shrunk, who were just as much people as I was now, of course.

“If it’s happened once, it can happen again.  For all we know, someone here’s shrinking and we just haven’t noticed yet.”  I turned around and saw Fulda glaring daggers at her youngest sister.  Gina was walking a fine line, but she was yet to violate any of Fulda’s conditions.

Fortunately, the tension was broken when Alyssa returned, her footfalls making the ground tremble beneath me.  She walked into the circle carrying an upturned bottle cap, clearly still looking for me.  Her steps got much softer once she entered the circle, but her mammoth feet were still tremendous hazards for me.  I ran away from them when they got close enough I could see the individual threads making up her socks, but with Anni’s foot still acting as a wall I could not go far.

Alyssa began spinning in place as she looked for me, but with me practically beneath her there was no way she could see me.  “Hey, down here!” I shouted up at her.  “I’m at the base of Anni’s foot!”  A white-clad sole soared over me, just missing my head.  Her steps were getting shorter and more rapid, making it inevitable that she would step on me.

The humongous feet stopped, then took a quick step away.  Looking up the tower of smooth, pale skin and over the khaki shorts, I saw her looking straight down at me.  “There you are!” she proclaimed.  “I thought I heard a little squeak from beside my foot!”  I had only cried out from desperation and was shocked she had heard me.  Even though she had been looking for me, Alyssa seemed just as surprised to see me.

“Would you mind moving your foot for a sec, Anni?  I’d rather not get it in my face.”  The brunette amazon pulled her foot back beneath her and Alyssa knelt, making a small earthquake when her knee touched the floor.  Carefully she lowered the blue bottlecap away from her chest and set it down beside me, making some of the clear liquid inside slosh over the edge.  It was nearly as tall as I was with twice the diameter, and I smelled the sharp sting of alcohol wafting over the metal walls.

“How much did you give him, Lys?” Fulda asked, watching the liquor move inside the cap.

“Just a splash, I promise!”  Alyssa’s feet turned sideways, then raced along the carpet with a loud, harsh scratch.  Her white, slender hands dropped to the floor to brace her, and with a loud crash and a tremor her butt set down.  She adjusted her legs and wiggled her rear to get situated, making the floor creak just lout enough for me to hear.  I had to look almost straight up to see her face, and she was sitting close enough that her shins nearly eclipsed my view.

“He can swim in that!” Fulda protested.  It almost felt like she was being protective toward me.

“What he doesn’t drink we can pour out, it’s seriously not that much.  And if he wants to go swimming in it, who’s to stop him?  It’s his party, too!”

I grabbed onto the metal rim of the cap and peeked over to see the pool of gin.  It looked about four feet deep to me, but I doubted I would be hopping the wall to take a dip in it.  The smell from up close was overpowering, and I held my breath as I cupped my hands together and dipped them in.  Still refusing to breathe, I brought them to my mouth and poured in as much liquor as I could.  Even though I swallowed as soon as it hit my tongue it still left an overwhelmingly bitter taste, and I sputtered while I staggered away from the cap.

“Do you have,” I began, but a hacking fit interrupted me.  I gripped the metal wall and breathed in deeply through my nose before trying to speak again.  “Do you have anything to mix it with?” I rushed out before another series of coughs.

“I do, your majesty, but there’s no way to get it in there without an eyedropper,” Fulda answered.  “If you don’t like the taste, you should drink it slower.”  She smirked before taking a long draught of her own drink, downing many times the liquid I had been given with each gulp.

“You know, little guy, some people would envy you for being so small,” Alyssa said.

“Really?  I doubt that,” I replied, and the shouting helped cover my lack of surprise.  I was living the dream of all my fans, and just two days ago it had been my ultimate fantasy.  Living through it, however, was a different thing entirely.  While I had always known that on an intellectual level, I had never expected to be faced with the sheer terror and absolute mortal peril of being my perfect woman’s shrunken toy.

“No, really!  I mean, it feels weird to say this out loud, but I think I can around someone who’s actually shrunk.  I’m pretty sure that if he had the chance my boyfriend would swap places, or at least sizes, with you in an instant.”  She took my silence as an invitation to elaborate, though I already knew everything about her boyfriend.  I had created him, after all, and if my stories existed in this world he would undoubtedly be one of my most dedicated fans.  “When we chat online, he always wants to roleplay that he shrinks, or that I shrink him, and then we see what happens from there.”  Normally she steps on him or eats him, but more to be cheeky than from actually being into it.  “If I’m being honest, I think it’s pretty weird.  It’s not like you wanted to shrink, right?”

“No, of course not!”  Again, having to shout covered for me being remarkably bad at lying.

“It’d be cool if someone could shrink other people, though,” Gina interjected, earning another glare from Fulda.  “They could give your boyfriend exactly what he wants.”

“I’d really rather they didn’t,” Alyssa replied, turning to look at Gina.  “I indulge him because I love him, and it’s just make-believe, but if he actually shrank like that?  I’d probably squish him out of annoyance.”  It took a moment for her to realize what she had said, and when she did she turned back to face me, wide-eyed and holding up her hands.  “Not- not that I’d step on you!  You didn’t want to be shrunk, and I don’t find you annoying.  Plus, we’re not dating.  Not that no one will date you!  I’m sure there’s a woman out there who’d be head over heels to meet someone like you!”

“Lys,” Fulda broke in, and Alyssa’s increasingly panicked face looked to her.  “No matter how hard you backpedal, you won’t turn back time to before you said that.  Besides, he knows you don’t mean him, specifically.  You know she doesn’t want to smash you, right?”

Without an insult attached, it took a second for me to realize Fulda was talking to me.  “Yeah, of course!” I piped up.  “I can’t imagine anyone here hurting me, at least on purpose.  We’re all friends, right?”

“That’s right.  We’re all friends,” Fulda confirmed, smiling.  Coming from her, it sounded like someone trying to talk down a hostage situation, but I doubted anyone else picked up on that.

“Personally, I don’t care if a guy’s shorter than me,” Victoria said after a long, uncomfortable silence.  “Most guys are, after all, and I think that’s true for most people here.  I don’t think I’d date a guy as short as you – sorry, but I don’t want to get your hopes up – but five foot?  Six foot?  What’s the difference?  I’m bending down regardless.”  The titanesses arrayed around me generally agreed, even Alyssa: I knew that, even though her boyfriend had not been shrunk, he was still shorter than he was, possibly leading to his fascination with being shrunk.  Significantly missing from the voices were Fulda and Gina.

“I want the shortest guy possible,” Gina declared.  “A shrunken guy would be perfect.  He’d be reliant on me for everything, and he’d have to worship me as a goddess.”  I realized by now most of them had moved on to their third or fourth drink, and Gina did not have the same tolerance as everyone else.  “I’d have absolute control over him.”

After another long, uncomfortable silence, Anni noticed that Fulda had yet to say anything.  “What about you, red?”

Fulda’s body jolted, as though she had been daydreaming this whole time.  “I’m sorry, what?”

“Would you date a guy who’s shorter than you?”

Fulda chewed on her top lip while she thought.  “Bitch, I’m six-eight, so I know you sympathize.  I don’t care if a guy’s half a mile or half an inch tall.  All that matters to me is that he’s cute, and sweet, and treats me right.”  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jessica and Gina contorting their faces to keep from blurting out everything she knew.  So far everything had been strictly hypothetical, and if Gina could talk about people shrinking, it only seemed fair Fulda could say this as far as her rules went.

“Wouldn’t you want to be friends with a guy first?” Jessica asked.  We both knew what she was doing, but I could not manage the same exasperated expression as Fulda.  “I mean, that’s all well and good, but I don’t think you really understand a person unless you’ve known them for nine or ten years.”  There was a little more contention among the chorus this time, but they generally agreed that would be best, too.

“I don’t think so,” Gina said, breaking the unanimity.  “I think if I found a really tiny guy, like someone who’d shrunk – present company excluded of course – I’d go for him over everyone else.  In a way, I wish I were in Lys’s position.  A guy who wants to shrink would be perfect for me, provided he knows what he’s getting into.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll give you his number tomorrow,” Alyssa joked, and everyone except Gina grinned.

“What about you, sis?” Jessica pressed.  “You’ve been awfully quiet over there.”

“I just think nine to ten seems a bit much,” Fulda replied.  “I think four or five years is more than enough time to know whether someone’s right for you.  Someone might change over the course of a couple years, but five?  If you can stand someone for that long, you can stay with them for a lot longer.”

Anni reached out and grabbed Fulda’s hand.  “Hey red, if you want to make it official…”

Fulda squeezed back.  “Sorry, amazon, but your window passed four or five years ago.  You know how it is, right?”  They both burst out laughing, and I clapped my ears and crouched low. 

“Hey, does anyone want to do shots?” Fulda offered, drastically changing the subject.  “Because I could go for some shots right now.”  I assumed my vote did not count, so the party voted unanimously in favor.  “Okay.  Just remember that bottlecap in the middle isn’t a shot!  It’s our tiny friend’s drink and he might be swimming in it.”  Fulda walked off, making the floor rumble in her wake, and I wondered how much worse this party could get for me.

Thirty minutes and eight shots each later, the party was starting to wind down.  I was amazed at their endurance: for young women just on the cusp of college, they had displayed amazing constitutions so far, but they were starting to look haggard.  Even the seemingly endless tanks of Fulda and Anni were swaying when they sat up unsupported.  Had their supply of alcohol not run out, however, I expected they could each have forced three more down before there was serious trouble.

For my part, I quickly got tired of reaching over the bottlecap’s walls every time I wanted a drink.  By the time they were on their second shot I climbed over the metal ridge and hopped in, splashing gin all over myself.  My slight inebriation made the concentrated alcohol fumes wafting up from the source bearable, though I still could not stand dunking my head in.  I simply drank a bit out of my hand each time they knocked back a glass.  Just because they were hundreds of times my size did not mean I was unable to keep up with them.

As they scoured the living room for any last alcohol they may have forgotten, a long shadow fell over me.  I looked up and saw a pair of pale blue eyes staring back and involuntarily flinched.  It was possible she did not spot me, but she definitely saw the liquid rippling away from me.

“Found some!” the titaness declared before seizing the bottlecap with her thumb and index finger.  She picked it up as she sat back, and the resulting turbulence finally dunked me beneath into the gin.  Through the shimmering surface I watched light spread across the giantess’s face, revealing that it was Gina who grabbed me.  Looking down at me, she smiled and declared, “Bottoms up!”

The bottlecap raced toward Gina’s open mouth, then stopped suddenly enough about half of the remaining gin sloshed over the side onto Gina’s stockings.  A golden-brown hand was wrapped around Gina’s wrist hard enough to make her fair skin dimple.  “No,” Fulda boomed with authority.  “The little guy’s in that.”

“Yeah, I saw him climb in,” Gina cockily replied.  She tried again to bring the metal cap to her face, but Fulda’s grip held her arm tight.

“I’m not going to let you drink our little friend.”  I was not sure which word was doing the most work, or if her omissions were more significant.  Whatever her motivation, however, I was just glad someone had saved me in time.

“Your friend?”  Gina chuckled and relaxed her hand, sending me sliding into the far side of the bottlecap.  The view above had shifted to the vast expanse of a tanned, powerful thigh, which I found much more pleasant than a maw intent on devouring me.  “Do you shrink all your friends until they’re bug-sized, or do you save that for guys you want to fuck?”

Fulda’s face twisted with anger, but she kept herself restrained for now.  “Gina, you’re drunk and making shit up.  Give me the little guy before you do something you’ll regret.”

“Okay, but first tell me if you’re going to put him in your mouth or your pussy.”  In the moment of momentary shock, Gina wrenched her arm free from Fulda’s hand.  It swung in a wide arc, pressing me against the cap’s plastic cover before jerking to a halt.  The sudden stop launched me into the air, and I flipped head over feet until I reached the apex of my arc.  Then I plummeted downward in an uncontrolled dive, a vast field of black and white growing rapidly in my view.  I clenched my eyes shut and flailed my arms, hoping for a miracle to save me from being splattered.

My fall was broken by soft cotton stretched tight over the padding of an instep, momentarily driving me into the gentle black fabric.  It quickly reformed, however, pushing me out to tumble along the steep incline of a sole.  I was still too in shock from my fall and landing to grab onto anything and rolled off the foot to be buried neck-deep in the carpet.  Looking up the sloped foot and past a smooth, lightly tanned knee, I saw the side of Victoria’s face as she watched the sisterly conflict develop.  Due to my insignificant size, she did not even notice that I landed on her and had no idea she had likely just saved my life.

I looked back to where I had been launched from and saw Gina and Fulda still squaring off, the former still clutching an empty bottlecap with two digits.  In the time it had taken me to fall, she had managed to get back to her feet and stand to her full height.  It was subtle, but her eyes were pointed very slightly downward as she faced off with her sister.  If I noticed it, there was no doubt they had, too.

“What’s wrong, little sister?” Gina snarled.  “Do you not want me spreading around that you can shrink people, or that you’re fucking a gnat shaped like a man?  Maybe you’re just worried you’re finally getting a taste of your own medicine?”

Fulda’s right arm tensed and her hand curled into a tight fist.  “Gina Irene Stein,” she growled, “you’re blackout drunk and don’t know what you’re doing, so I’m giving you one more chance to sit down and shut up before I knock your teeth in.”

The ground shuddered with a tremendous impact, and a shadow engulfed me then the immense tower of Anni unfolded.  She stepped toward the feuding sisters, and her titanic foot landed so the gigantic sole stretched over me.  With how fast she was moving I did not even have time to cry out before it swung down, striking the carpet with a great, dull smack.  It felt like someone had roughly slapped my entire body at once, and the individual nylon threads of her stocking pressed into my skin.

While the gargantuan foot laid atop me, I felt every subtlety of her rushing forward.  Her weight pressed down, shoving me further into the carpet, and the tendons stretching along her sole tensed.  The pressure on me increased when she shifted her weight forward, driving the ball of her foot against the ground.  My body compressed when the enormous weight passed over me, but it was gone in an instant.  Anni raised her heel to step forward again, and the colossal foot was lifted off me.  I watched it traverse what seemed to be hundreds of feet in a moment to stand between Fulda and Gina, glad that I was not stuck to it either as an unwilling passenger or a small red stain.

“Okay, let’s break it up before we do something we can’t take back,” Anni said, placing a hand on both of their clavicles.  “We’ve all had a little too much, and I think it’s time to call it a night.”  Fulda relaxed while Gina bristled at the intervention, though I was unsure whether it was due to the reproach or seeing someone taller than her.  Regardless, a downward glance from Anni made her think better of pushing it, and both of them stood down.

“We’ll see what you have to say about this tomorrow when your friend isn’t here to protect you, little sister,” Gina spat, then stormed off.  The entire room shook with each of her steps, making my body vibrate along with the thick carpet fibers.  Everyone watched her leave in silence, not wanting to risk setting her off further.

“I better go make sure she doesn’t do anything crazy,” Jessica announced before standing.  “At least, crazier.”  She staggered to the side, then took an unsteady step forward, leaning against the wall for support.  Alyssa got up to help her walk without falling over, letting the taller woman rest a hand on her shoulder.  Together, the seismic force of their steps did not match the raw power generated by Gina’s tantrum.

Once they were out of earshot, the three remaining giantesses got together to confer.  “You can’t have her spreading that kind of stuff around,” Victoria said.  “She’s popular, and a lot of people believe whatever she says.  Plus, they’ll think she has some sort of inside information about you.”

“She’s just drunk and running her mouth,” Anni replied.  “She won’t remember anything about tonight.  If no one mentions it, she doesn’t even have to be embarrassed.”

While they offered their opinions, Fulda was scanning the floor around her.  “Did anyone see where the little guy went?  I didn’t see Gina swallow him, so he should still be around here somewhere.”

Anni warmly clapped a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.  “I’m sure you’ll find him.  We’ll get out of your hair and head to bed so you can look for him.  Thanks for having us over.”  The two titanesses walked off, and it felt like the whole house trembled from their every step while they walked toward the master bedroom.

When the door was closed, Fulda turned around and immediately spotted me.  She took a long stride forward, and her ginormous foot crashed into the ground beside me.  Its impact made my bones rattle and my insides shake, reminding me of the true power of a giantess.  Her other leg came up quickly, striking the ground with similar force so she stood astride me.  Still up to my neck in the carpet, I could only gaze up helplessly at her while she stared back down at me with her perfect blue eyes.

Instead of rattling off the usual taunts, she simply knelt and dug a finger into the carpet.  Her finger probed around me, loosening the carpet fibers holding me tight, before lifting me out of where I was embedded.  Once I was flat on the ground she repositioned her fingers so I was boxed in by the tips of her thumb and forefinger.  She carefully pinched them together, pinning me between her powerful digits, then plucked me off the floor.  Fulda stood back up, keeping her hand remarkably steady, moving slow enough that I barely felt like I was ascending hundreds of feet.

Fulda remained silent for the whole trip back to her room.  She did not barrage me with mockery, nor did she call me a bug or any other kind of small creature, nor did she threaten to squish me.  For once, being trapped in the warm, soft grasp of my creation was relaxing.  I did not even notice her going up the stairs, which she had previously made as uncomfortable for me as possible.  By the time she stood in front of her door, I felt safe for the first time in two days.

Entering her room reminded me of what was happened in there, and I hoped she would just let me to go sleep.  Fulda walked along the side of her bed, and I got ready to climb into my own oversized bed inside the dollhouse.  Rather than dropping me in there, however, she extended her hand forward and gently placed me on a pillow.  Her fingers loosened, and when it was clear I would not start rolling down the slope she pulled them away entirely.  For a moment she merely stood there, staring down at me while I admired her colossal form.

“Not everything Gina said was bullshit, you know.”  Her voice was still a low rumble that made my whole body quiver, but it was more like sonic velvet than the crack of thunder.  I knew that she was the one who shrank me, just as she had shrunk this character – she had told me as much – so I stayed silent to invite her to continue.  Instead of saying something, she reached in and undid her shorts, then shrugged her hips so they fell to the floor.  She then grabbed the tail of her tank top and pulled it over her head before balling it up and dropping it beside her nightstand.  With my perfect woman looming over me, hundreds of feet tall and wearing nothing but a black bra and panties, I was speechless.  The only thing stopping me from thinking that I had been crushed at the party and gone to heaven was the idea that did not even think of me as a person, let alone a man, and thought nothing of stripping down in front of me.

“I do like you.  I think you’re really cute.  Maybe I do want you to be my secret tiny boyfriend.  Shit, maybe not even as a secret.”  As she spoke she turned and sat on the bed, and when her butt landed on it the springs cried out in protest of her tremendous weight.  They held fast, and the entire bed sloped inward beneath her.  It was only by grabbing onto a satin thread that I managed to remain on the pillow and avoid being sucked into the gravity well generated by her butt.  Similarly, I knew she was trying to suck me into a false sense of security so she could dash whatever hopes I had left and kept my guard up.

“Bug – I mean, toy – I mean, pet – I mean… I’m not even sure how to refer to you right now!  I need to tell you something.”  I was not going anywhere, and the sound of her voice would penetrate whatever I put up to block it, so the only thing stopping her was herself.  “I’ve thought you’re cute for a while now.  Like, you’re my first non-celebrity crush.  As I got taller and you… didn’t, I thought you looked cuter the taller I got.  When I learned how to shrink people, I figured you’d look even cuter if you were smaller.  And I was right!  Every day I came by to see you, and you were even more adorable!  After your parents took you away from me, I was worried we could never be together, but now… we are, and you’re practically my property, aren’t you?”  She smirked, and I had my confirmation that this was another power game of hers.

Fulda turned to face me while swinging her legs onto the bed, and the squealing of her mattress was only drowned out by the thud of her legs on the far side of the bed.  She propped herself up on her elbows, making the pull of her weight toward her even stronger, and I gripped the satin pillowcase’s thread even more tightly.  Her head loomed over me, close enough that I could see into of my reflection in her eyes.  It felt like she was sizing me up, calculating what she could do, while I could only look up at her in fear and confusion.

Her gigantic, beautiful face raced toward me, and in an instant all I could see were her lips.  She placed them on top of me, and the soft, pink skin completely engulfed my body.  As the muscles over me tensed and flexed, I realized what she was up to once it was too late to do anything about it.  Any second now she would suck me into her mouth and swallow me, doing exactly what she had just stopped Gina from doing.  Instead, when her lips spread the tip of her tongue emerged and gently probed me from head to toe before retracting, leaving behind a thin layer of saliva.

Fulda lifted her head, and her lips parted from my body with an audible smack.  A thin layer of sticky pink lip gloss remained in their wake, but I could not complain under her wide-eyed gaze.  “Our first kiss,” she proclaimed, “four years in the making.  It’s fun kissing tiny men.  I can feel every bit of your body with my lips, every movement you make.  Much more fun than a regular-sized guy.”

There was a flash of light, creased skin, and before I realized what was happening I was encased in Fulda’s fist.  The world whipped and turned around me, but from the darkness inside her hand I had no idea what was actually happening.  Loud creaks and mechanical groans came from all around me, barely muffled by the flesh wrapped around me.  Everything was whirling chaos until I did not even know which way was up anymore.

With a light thud the swirl of movement was over.  Fulda’s fingers opened, releasing me to drop onto another broad plain of skin.  She moved her hand away, and I saw I was standing in the trench between her abs.  Behind me, I saw her long legs that seemed to stretch forever, with the inviting band of her black panties just a few dozen feet away.  Ahead of me was the shallow divot of her belly button and the large, rounded ridge of her breasts pushing against her black bra, with her shining blue eyes gazing at me from above.

“I’ve seen how you look at me,” she purred, and the vibrations of her speech ran up from her body and through mine, making me tingle.  “You want to fuck me.  It’s fine, you don’t need to be embarrassed about it!  Most guys do!  The main difference is that I want to fuck you too.  So how about you walk down there, climb into my panties, and give us what we both want?”

Looking at her beautiful face, then her perfect body, and turning to her amazing legs, it was an irresistible invitation.  In just a few seconds I could be inside her and living out one of my ultimate fantasies.  Something was not right, though.  I had seen how much she drank tonight, and her eyes had a somewhat glassy look to them.  Besides, if she really wanted to fuck me right now, she would have dropped me inside her panties so I would have no choice.

I turned back toward her face and said, “Fulda, I would love nothing more than to climb inside you and bang until we both pass out.  But you’re very drunk, and it doesn’t feel right.”

“You’re drunk too.”

“That doesn’t make it right, though.  Let’s get some sleep, and we can do this later when we’re both in our right minds.”

Fulda smirked.  “If I don’t crush you for defying me.”  Air rushed out when her head laid back against the pillow, and the bed trembled along with her body with its landing.  Absent anywhere else to go, I walked forward a bit and crawled into her navel, then curled up inside it.  The warmth there was reassuring, and the steady rise and fall with her breath was like her body itself was lulling me to sleep.

As I drifted off, I reflected on how today’s events differed from what should have happened.  Gina was not supposed to know Fulda had shrunk me, or that people could be shrunk at all, until after Fulda’s prom.  For that matter, Gina and Jessica were full-fledged adults now, and Gina had outgrown Fulda without any additional boost.  The consequences of these changes alone were incalculable.  Would Gina shrink Fulda once she learned how?  Could she?  Did Anni and Victoria know what Fulda could do, but were just being coy about it?  The version of Fulda guiding the retelling of this story was making a lot of changes, and I was not sure if she had thought of the consequences of everything she had changed.

More immediate to me, though, was that Fulda seemed to be in love, or at least infatuated, with me already.  That should not happen for another five years.  Even the Fulda in control of this story had not realized she loved tiny men yet.  Was this yet another mutation she had not though of?  A manifestation of her latent regrets for shrinking the other member of the most important relationship of her life until that point, without knowing that he was still alive then?  Or maybe this Fulda was acting entirely on her own, and she was simply toying with me.

Some of my answers I would get in the morning.  The others would have to wait until much later.  For now, the only thing I wanted was sleep, and I drifted off to pleasant dreams inside Fulda’s belly button, hoping that, in the morning, she would remember what had happened tonight.

A loud slap startled me awake.  Once I realized where I was, I poked my head outside of Fulda’s belly button to look around.  One enormous hand laid next to me, pressing into her abdomen, forming a curved, tanned wall with her fingers.  I looked up the trench formed by her abs, and over the great black hills I saw her chilling blue eyes staring back at me.  Her auburn hair was tousled and pressed down on one side, with loose bangs spilling into her face.

“We need to talk about last night, so get up,” Fulda said, and the whole world around me rumbled.  It felt amazing, like my whole body was getting massaged simultaneously.  I wanted to luxuriate in the feeling and warmth, so I remained curled up inside her navel.  “Did you hear me?  Get the fuck up before I dig you out.”

“I heard you,” I replied.  “Don’t worry, we didn’t do anything.”

“I know we didn’t, otherwise you’d be a smashed mess inside me right now.”  Although she was becoming more irritated, I did not want to get out just yet.  Her voice making the world around me shake was too good to give up.  “This is what I was worried about.”

I gave her a long, confused look and blinked twice.  ”Pardon me?” I asked, resting my chin on the rim of her belly button.  Even though she was ridiculously fit and a regular-sized person would be hard-pressed to find anything soft on her, it gave me ample cushioning.

“I’ll decide whether you deserve one.”  Fulda flicked her tummy beside me, making a loud thud when the tip of her index finger slammed against an ab.  “You think that just because I like you, you’re special.  You don’t have to do what I say because you mean something to me.”  She pressed down, deforming the wall around me so I slid partway out of it.  “Let me make this clear: it’s a big world, and you are very small.  If you make trouble for me, I won’t hesitate to end your insignificant life.  If you defy me, I’ll crush you without a second thought.  The second you become inconvenient I’ll smash you like the bug you are.  Am I clear?”

With the whole world shaking in a surprisingly erotic way it was difficult to focus on what she was saying, but I got the gist of it.  “I’m not sure you will.”

“Are you willing to bet your life on it?” Fulda growled.  “Right now I could squish you with just a finger and I’d be cleaned up when I shower in five minutes when your puny, smashed corpse gets washed down the drain.  I’ll give you one more chance: get up or be put down forever.”

From her glare, I could tell she was not joking.  At the very least, she must think I was challenging her right now and would not stand for it.  Sheepishly, I crawled the rest of the way out of her belly button and stood in front of her finger, using the slight overhang of her fingernail as an awning.

“Good.  Pull that shit again and you won’t have time to regret it.”  Fulda rolled onto her side, and I slid over her abs until the slide turned into a drop.  I landed on the broad plain of blue sheets and she continued rolling over, then she swung her feet over the edge.  They landed with a loud crash, then Fulda stood, and I felt utterly insignificant as I gazed up at her.  She walked toward the door, muttering to herself as she went.  “Lousy insolent bugs, thing they don’t have to listen to me.”

Fulda closed the door behind her, leaving me to think on what had just happened.  There was no doubt that, physically, she was capable of smashing me.  She was hundreds of times my size, and if nothing more than her finger set down too hard on me I would be splattered.  I was no longer sure she could bring herself to do it, however.  There were few people Fulda liked, and I could not see her grinding one to paste on a whim.  Not only that, but there may be some influence from the Fulda who dropped me in here stopping her.  Both Fuldas talked tough but seemed hesitant to do any lasting harm to me.

 I was also not sure who I was within the context of this universe.  Being its creator was meaningless if I had no control and was forced to live as my creation’s toy.  More precisely, who was I to Fulda?  She clearly had some relationship with the person whose life I had assumed, but the time before the story started was poorly defined and that could mean anything.  Had we been friendly?  Enemies?  Was I her favorite bullying target?  With all the changes Fulda had made to the foundation, anything I could base my guess on was useless.

Thumps from beyond the door grabbed my attention, and I spun to see it swing inward.  Fulda entered, wearing nothing but a towel that barely covered her privates, then pushed the door shut with her heel.  Long strands of damp auburn hair clung to her neck and broad shoulders, and her tanned skin glistened with remaining moisture.  The whole room shook while she strode toward her dresser, completely unconcerned with me.  While I would never tell her for fear of further inflating her ego, she looked exactly how I imagined a goddess should.

Fulda pulled out the exact same outfit she had been wearing the day before then slammed the drawer shut.  I imagined every drawer was full of the same arrangement of shorts, tank top, and ankle socks, all gathered together so she could just grab it and go.  Unless she was doing something special, that was what she wore.  I had described it so many times that it had manifested as the only outfit available to her for daily wear.

She reached into the towel, and with a flick of her finger dislodged the small flap holding it together.  The towel dropped to her feet, leaving Fulda stark naked.  Freed from the cloth holding them together her breasts pushed out and dropped, her pink areolas bobbing with their bouncing.  Though they looked enormous, they were perfectly appropriate for her frame – and more than capable of engulfing me.  My eyes traced down the line of her chiseled abs to the strip of dark red pubic hair still far above my head.  If she had been more forceful last night I would probably still be inside her vagina, regardless of my morals, though it was questionable whether I would still be breathing.

Fulda quickly got dressed, pulling the black sports bra on then sliding a pair of black panties up her legs.  Her wide thighs made her work to zip and button her shorts, and she had to pull down hard on her tank top to keep it from exposing her midriff as it hung neutrally.  She plopped down on the bed, making the mattress slope toward her when the springs compressed under her weight, and pulled her clean white socks onto her enormous feet.

The sudden change in landscape took me by surprise, and I fell toward the center of the temporary crater.  I tumbled down the steepening slope, clawing at the surface of Fulda’s sheets for something to stop me, but my fingers slid uselessly over the stitching.  Down I went, getting faster as the slope got steeper, until I crashed into the side of Fulda’s toned buttock.  My body bounced off the rough layer of denim pulled tight against it, and I came to a rest against the gold stitching around her pocket.

From the thuds coming up from the floor, I surmised Fulda was putting on her shoes, no doubt the same lo-top Chucks I had described her in a thousand times.  When she was fully dressed and shoed, my red-headed owner stood, making the distorted surface I laid on react violently to the absence of her.  It sprung back into place, launching me into the air so that I flipped head over feet several times.  Though it seemed like I was launched into orbit, I did not even reach the bottom of Fulda’s shorts, but my landing back on the mattress was still hard enough that I bounced several times before stopping.

Fulda turned around, and I gazed up her immaculate body to see her cold blue eyes staring back down at me.  I tried to glean some emotion from her expression, but she wore a perfect poker face.  “Lucky you,” she boomed with her voice of velvet thunder.  “You wouldn’t be the first person to get accidentally smashed when I sat on them.”  Of course, that was something which entirely avoided the question of whether she would.  If Fulda were to accidentally step on me, her lack of intent would not stop me from being crushed.  I had written enough endings like that to know an unaware giantess was one of the most dangerous possible forces for someone my size.

A soft, high-pitched squeak came from the corner, and Fulda’s head snapped toward the bookshelf standing there.  “Speaking of people getting smashed,” she muttered, then reached a hand down to pry me away from her butt.  Her index finger pushed me along her bedspread until I rested on her fingertip, then her thumb clamped down, pinching me.  In a single movement she lifted me off the fabric and stood, making the world rush around me while a lack of blood to my head made me light-headed.

Fulda’s footfalls thundered against the floor as she walked around the bed, making my entire world shake along with the rushing pendulum sensation of her swinging arm.  Everything came to a stop, punctuated by the loud slap of her palm against wood.  She lifted me to her shoulder level so I could see.  Below, cast in her long shadow, was a small box with two tiny people standing inside it.  They stood transfixed looking up at her, as in awe of her size and power as I was.

“Which of you was that?” she demanded, and they momentarily recoiled from her booming voice.  A flurry of squeaks answered her while they pointed back and forth at each other, lasting until Fulda loudly cleared her throat.  “Typical shrunken cowards.  As it is, I’m going to mash both of you into red paste in two seconds.  However, if one of you comes forward, I might show some mercy and let you live to see another day.”

Both of their hands shot up, but one was slightly quicker.  Fulda chuckled then reached into the box, seizing one of the men between her thumb and forefinger.  He did not resist as her digits fastened around him, and his friend watched as he was plucked out of the box.  Grinning, Fulda held the man up to her eyes.  I could just see him from my vantage point; he looked almost exactly like an ant she had lifted out of the grass.

“I do like stupid shrinks,” Fulda began, “and you definitely fit the description.”  A quiet yelp cut the silence, then Fulda’s fingers opened, releasing him.  In an instant he plummeted down the length of her titanic body, landing somewhere by the tip of her Converse and getting lost amid the carpet fibers.

Her cold eyes flicked over to me and she boomed, “You’re a stupid shrink, too, but a trainable one.  I’ll let you watch, so you can see what all this ‘no’ shit results in.”  With that, her fingers around me opened as well, and I raced toward the carpet.  In a blink I was below her waist and speeding along her thigh, then before I knew it I impacted the soft, white carpet below.  It seemed like a long drop due to my minuscule size but it was over very quickly, and I quickly settled beside the white rubber of her shoe’s toe.

“I hope you’re watching, pipsqueak,” she growled.  “This could be you next time.”  The toe of her titanic, low-top Converse raised slightly, then shot forward so the sole was well over her victim.  He squealed for a second before Fulda’s foot came hammering down and the diamond-patterned brown rubber sole completely engulfed him.  I had often described a light crunch when someone got crushed, but if there was one, it was inaudible, drowned out by the immense thud of her foot.

Fulda raised her toes and I could see a small red spot where he had been standing.  That was all that was left of him.  A member of the universe I now dwelt in had been reduced to pudding beneath Fulda’s gargantuan foot.  This was not some character I was writing about as a lark.  Rather, this was a person, as far as I was concerned now, and the same could just as easily happen to me.

“What are you staring at, bug?” Fulda asked, and I looked up to see her staring directly at me.  “Want a close look at my sole, too?”  I shook my head no, and her mouth twitched to the right in a smirk.  “Didn’t think so.  Why don’t you get lost while I clean up this mess?”

I looked around for somewhere I could get to or somewhere I could go on my own and came back empty.  When I looked back at Fulda, she rolled her eyes and sighed loudly.  “Fine, I’ll get your little car down for you if you promise to drive it out of my room for a bit.”  She reached behind the box containing the doubtlessly terrified student and pulled out a tiny blue car gripped between two fingers.  Fulda knelt, then set the vehicle on the carpet in front of me before taking a single long step over me.

I slipped into the car and, once I had adjusted the seat, found that it was the perfect size for me.  A set of keys was in the center console with the fob attached, so all I had to do was press a button and the engine turned over.  The sound of it turning on was overwhelmed by the incessant pounding of Fulda’s footsteps, and even the door’s creaking hinges were louder than it running.  After opening the door just a crack Fulda came back toward me, and the car bounced on its suspension due to the quakes emanating from every footfall.

When Fulda was back in place, I put the car into gear and started driving.  It was much more challenging than I expected, and the car bounced back and forth as the tires moved from one carpet fiber to the next.  As I was tossed about in the driver’s seat, I chuckled at the speedometer.  It said I was going 20 miles per hour, but after several seconds I had just moved the length of Fulda’s shoe.  Between the rough terrain and the car’s minuscule size, it was going to take me a while to get anywhere.

Five minutes later, I finally turned the corner of Fulda’s door so I could look into the hallway.  She had opened it just wide enough for the car, so I carefully navigated my way through the crack and over the threshold.  The instant I was outside of Fulda’s room the door slammed shut behind me.  Through the rear view mirror I could see there was not enough clearance under the door for me to get back in, so I hoped she remembered to come get me when it was time.

The area beyond Fulda’s door was a nice, wide open space, with only a large armoire that stretched to the ceiling as the only piece of furniture.  Aside from the one behind me there were two doors leading off from it, and a stairway in front of me and to the left.  Any trip down that was sure to ruin my car and an excursion to one of the other doors was sure to ruin me, so I supposed the only option available to me was to simply drive in circles until either Fulda came for me or I ran out of gas.

Driving out here was even more difficult than inside Fulda’s room.  Without feet constantly treading back and forth there was nothing to mash the long, thick carpet fibers down, and I had to carefully navigate around several of them that were tall enough to lift the car off its tires.  I also had to go slower so that the constant jostling would be tolerable, and my makeshift goal of the armoire did not seem to get any closer.

Despite the complexities of driving a tiny car on mostly fresh carpet, I did eventually acclimate to it and settle into a rhythm.  Without needing to focus on the task immediately at hand, I could reflect more on my current situation.  Not only had I been shrunken and taken captive by my own creation, but she had taken control of this universe from me then plunged me into it.  Was this Fulda the same as the one who had done that, or was she going to develop into the same person?  Could I deter her from that course, and if so, what would it mean for me?  It still was not clear whether I had taken the role of a person adjacent to her who already existed, or if she had created a role especially for me.

Thundering footfalls on the stairs pulled me out of my train of thought.  I was a bit over halfway to the armoire, and whoever was coming up the stairs would be here in a matter of seconds.  That was much too long for me to either press forward and hide in the furniture’s shadow or turn back and seek refuge inside Fulda’s room.  As I considered my effectively non-existent options, the crashing footsteps drew closer and louder, signaling the shortening time I had to do something hopeless.

Another thump from the stairs, and a cap of platinum blond hair ascended into view.  The ground trembled again, and pale blue eyes appeared just above the top of the stairs.  As the earthquakes grew in intensity more of her face was revealed, and I realized I would be dealing with Gina.  Of the two possible outcomes, I had gotten the worse of them.  Knowing I needed to move quickly if I was to have any hope of escaping her notice, I pushed the gas pedal to the floor, and the engine roared to life.

Immediately the car went airborne, and when it came back down the front was partially embedded in the carpet.  Tremors from Gina’s footsteps became stronger with each passing second, and I repeatedly mashed the pedal, pleading with the car to move.  All I managed to accomplish was making the engine rev in vain.  If anything, my frantic attempts to dislodge the car only made it more stuck.

The intermittent earthquakes stopped when a titanic foot clad in black cotton set down some distance in front of me and to the left.  Horrific laughter emanated from above.  Through the window I could only see up to her ankle, but I knew Gina was staring down at me.  I tried one more time to free the car, and Gina’s laughter continued while it helplessly wiggled in place.

“What’s this?” Gina boomed.  “Fulda’s itty-bitty boyfriend is out for a joyride in his teensy-weensy car?  I never would’ve imagined it.”  My only chance was to escape on foot.  “It looks like you’re stuck, though.  Let me help you up, then we can talk terms.”  Simultaneously I unbuckled the seatbelt and flipped the lock on the door, then reached for the handle.

Metal squealed as the doors were pushed inward by Gina’s fingertip just when I went to push the door open.  The car pitched forward and sideways and my stomach leapt to my throat when Gina lifted it off the ground.  She stood, and in less than a second I had ascended hundreds of feet almost straight into the air.  Her hand rotated, and I found myself between a pair of gigantic, light blue eyes squinting at me.  There was no more hope of escaping this situation.

A vast, flat surface opened above me, cut by the wrinkles lining Gina’s palm.  She lowered me onto the pale skin, and the car bounced on its suspension when she released her hold.  Gina lowered her hand until it was roughly level with her chin so she could properly look down at me and grinned.

“Why don’t you get out of your puny car before I tear the door off and yank you out?”

There was nothing else I could do.  The door creaked when I forced it open, and I had to push so hard that I fell out of the car once it gave way.  I landed on the smooth, warm surface of her palm, and Gina’s hot breath blasted me when she chuckled.  The deep whorls of her fingerprint circled above, and I watched helplessly as the tip of her index finger drew inexorably closer.

I began scooting on my butt toward her fingers and her smile widened.  Gina’s tremendous fingertip closed in, eclipsing her face, and hung over me.  “Come on, Gina, let’s be reasonable and- “

Her fingertip landed on top of me, and I felt the powerful vibrations of her laughter travel down her arm and shake me.  Gina pressed down slightly, pinning my arms against her palm.  “Such a small, pathetic voice,” she boomed.  “Such a small, pathetic man.  Hey pipsqueak: why are you so smaaaaall?”

I knew it was coming.  Independent of whatever universe we were in, that would always be her favorite question.  “I, uh, had a reverse growth spurt a few years ago.”

“Cut the shit, insect,” Gina shot back.  “No one believes that moronic ‘reverse growth spurt’ story, it’s just very convenient to go along with it.  Now, tell me why you’re so smaaaalllll, or I’ll apply just a bit more pressure and squash your puny body into nothing.”

Unless I wanted to sacrifice myself for the worst-kept secret of my universe, I had to come clean.  “Fulda shrank me,” I admitted.  “She did it a little bit at a time to make her story more convincing, but I’m small because of her.”

Gina burst into cruel laughter, spraying an unbearably warm fog over me.  “My little big sister shrank you?  I was just fishing for some groveling, but that’s way more interesting.”  Her finger shifted to the side and her thumb set down beside me, and her digits lightly pinched together around me.  She lifted me out of her palm and dangled me upside down between her tremendous light blue eyes, considering me with a look of mirth.  “My gut tells me to ask her about this immediately, but I’ve got a better idea: you’re going to do everything I tell you to do from now on, or else I’ll tell her you let her secret slip.”

“You’re going to blackmail me?”

“It’s more fun than always threatening to crush you and gives me somewhere to escalate.  If you don’t want me to though, I let Fulda know you told me her secret right now.  She’s very understanding.”

“No, that’s quite all right.”

“Good.”  Gina shook me from side to side and watched while I gradually came to a stop like a pendulum.  “I could play with you all day, but we don’t want Fulda getting suspicious, do we?  Or jealous.”  She squeezed me, and I winced from the increased pressure gripping my body.

With a mere two strides of her unbelievably long legs Gina crossed all the ground I had covered in a dozen minutes with a car.  She knocked thrice on the door with the hand holding the car, and an irritated voice answered, “What is it?  I’m busy!”

“I have something special for you!” Gina replied, shaking my body dangling beneath her fingers.  Muffled groaning came from the other side, then the lock unlatched and Fulda jerked the door open.

“Well, if it isn’t my little big sister!” Gina declared, and my eyes rang from the boom.  “Looks like your shrinking is really getting noticeable, at least to me.  You should start wearing heels a lot more.”

“Is this what’s so important?” Fulda asked, crossing her arms under her breasts.

“Aw, is widdle Fulda embarrassed that her kid sister dwarfs her now?” Gina teased.  “Better get used to it, since Jess will soon, too.  I think I’ll call you pint-sized.  Wait, no!  Fulda Fun-size!”

“I don’t have time for this.”  Fulda went to close the door, but Gina wedged her toes inside the doorway, blocking it.

“The real reason I’m here, my incredible shrinking sister, is that I found your boy-toy and his puny car out here just now.  You should really keep better track of your toys, or someone big and strong like me might break them.”

“Well, thanks,” Fulda replied, offering up a hand for me.  “Though you did choose to do it in a particularly annoying way.”

“No prob, little sis!” Gina said with enthusiasm and lowered me into Fulda’s waiting palm.  She set my head down inside the skin’s wrinkle, then released her grip so I fell along its length.  Once I was settled, she placed my dented and beaten car along the base of Fulda’s fingers.  “His little pipsqueak-mobile got a little banged up, but it should still work.”

Fulda curled her fingers over me and my car and pulled her hand back into her room.  “And if you ever want to be honest with us about your shrinking, we can help!  Jess and I still have a really nice dollhouse and the cutest clothes waiting for you.”

“Move your foot, dweeb.”  Gina gave one big, loud laugh before complying, and Fulda shut the door after her.

Now that we were in peace, Fulda opened the loose fist with me and turned her attention downward.  “Why couldn’t she have just smashed you?” she lamented, walking over to the bookshelf and tilting her hand so the car rolled off it.  “I guess you’re lucky you fucked up so early, there’s still another shrink in line ahead of you.”

Fulda unfurled the fingers on her other hand, revealing the surviving shrunken person dangling between her thumb and forefinger.  “I wanted to draw this out, but it’s a pretty good way to show you what’ll happen to you if you keep pissing me off.”  She tilted her head back and raised her hand, centering the other shrunken person over her mouth.  When she spread her pink, glossy lips, a chorus of high-pitched, incoherent screams started from her other hand.  Paying his begging no mind, Fulda opened her fingers, and he immediately dropped the foot or so straight into the dark cavern below.  Fulda’s lips closed behind him, sealing him inside, and a lump jumped in her throat when she swallowed.

Fulda looked down at me and opened her mouth wide, lifting and waggling her tongue and bobbing her head so I had a complete view of the inside of her mouth.  There was nothing aside from great, sharp teeth, her gigantic pink tongue, and the dangling uvula over her gullet.  She had swallowed him whole with absolutely zero difficulty.  “There’s no better snack than a shrunken man, and I’m always a little hungry.  You catch my drift, twerp?”

I gulped and nodded.  “Yes, Fulda.”  It was all she wanted to hear from me, and in fact, all she would allow me to say.  Fulda pinned me down with a finger and spun on her heel, carrying me back to my too-big dollhouse.

She crouched in front of the structure, which did not even reach halfway to her knees, and lowered her hand into the house.  Fulda took her finger from atop me and rotated her wrist, dumping me onto the floor.  With a self-satisfied smirk, she reached to the side and grabbed the roof.  “And I don’t want to hear a single peep or rustle out of you until it’s feeding time, got it?”  I nodded, knowing her demand started the moment she said it.  “Good.”  She set the roof back on top of the house and it snapped into place on the walls with a resounding click.

My windows were filled with bulging Converse when Fulda stood, then one of them raised into the sky.  A moment later there was a bang on the roof, followed by loud creaking under immense weight.  Thuds emanated from both sides of the home and the walls shook while Fulda repeatedly struck the house with the toe and heel of her shoe.  Her foot nearly stretched the entire width of the house, and I imagined Fulda was sizing up how many times she would have to stomp to utterly destroy it.

After a few minutes the banging stopped, most likely because Fulda got bored, and I watched her walk off toward the door, grab something, and come back to her bed.  Springs creaked when she sat down on it, and I rushed to the window facing her to watch.  She swung her long, powerful legs onto the mattress and slid her Converse off with one loud pop each, and opened the laptop lying on her stomach.

It had been amazing to see Fulda in action, and just as terrifying as I had imagined.  She was utterly ruthless, giving no quarter to people whose only offense had been following her directions, and made it clear I could just as easily meet the same fate if the whim struck her.  Yet, I still found her incredibly beautiful, maybe even because of her capacity to annihilate me with a single movement.  One thing was clear: I needed to stay as close to whatever passed for her good graces if I wanted to live long enough to figure this world out.

It was never clear how, exactly, Fulda thought of me.  The frequent threats to murder me ruled out any sort of relationship, but her tendency to bring me along when she went out was unlike anything she would do for a toy, either.  The best I could think of was a pet, or maybe a favorite shrink: every so often, she would use me to lure newly-shrunken people into a false sense of security to gain their trust before bringing her foot down.  That was how I spent the next several months; the dear, manipulative pet of my own favorite creation.

Fortunately, Fulda’s odd protectiveness of me kept me out of Gina’s clutches.  With Fulda keeping a close watch on me, Gina never had an opportunity to make good on her promise to blackmail me.  I could tell she wanted to.  Frequently, her gaze lingered on me whenever Fulda turned her back, and often her conversation seemed intended to frustrate her into just leaving.  There were even a few times when she asked to see me just for a few minutes.  Whatever she wanted from me, she would have to be craftier.

By the spring, they had all reached their canonical heights, so to say.  Fulda remained her titanic 6’8” and Jessica stopped just a bit short of her at 6’6”.  Gina, to everyone’s concern including mine, rocketed past both of them and settled at the actually Amazonian 7’6” and was not shy about throwing her height around.  She mercilessly teased her sisters, calling them “little sis” and “shorty,” and made a big show of having to duck underneath even Fulda’s doorway.

Aside from Fulda’s frequent executions of shrunken people, everything was rather uneventful until late April.  Jessica was unusually happy when she got in the car home and was practically beaming when we arrived.  Finally, once we were gathered around the table, Fulda asked her what was up.

“Oh, nothing,” Jessica replied, giggling.  “I just got asked to prom today.”

“That’s great!” Fulda shouted, and I flinched from the sound of her voice while she went to wrap her sister in a hug.  “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t know him.”  Jessica demurred, looking away from her sister and brushing a lock of blond hair behind her ear.  “Short little guy, pretty quiet, real nerdy.  He’s actually on the academic team.  Cute, though!”

“Yeah, maybe we can ride there together,” Gina butted in.  Fulda let go of Jessica and turned to face Gina, placing a hand on her hip to appear more stand-offish.

“It’s the junior-senior prom, you can’t be going.”

“I can if I’m invited.”  Gina’s smug expression fully carried through to her voice as she looked down at her older sisters.  Her sense of superiority was unbearable, even if somewhat warranted.  “Which I am.  I got some puny, five-foot-nothing senior to invite me.  It’s amazing how agreeable people are when you’ve got them pinned in a corner and you’re looming over them.  Why, don’t you have a date, little sis?”

Fulda opened her mouth to reply, but the words seemed to get stuck in her throat for a moment.  “I… someone’s going to ask me any day now!  Lots of guys are interested in me!”  While she was right, most of those guys had been mashed under her shoes or swallowed whole.  Anyone else who was interested in Fulda by now was too shy or hesitant to make their feelings known.

“When?” Gina replied, laughing.  “It’s in two weeks!  You’ll still have to get a dress, rent a limo, do all that stuff.  They’re not going to let you in dressed like you’re going to the gym.”

“Why don’t you just go stag?” Jessica offered.  “Or ask a guy yourself!  It’s not 1950 anymore, you can totally do that.”

“Yeah, you should go stag!” Gina giddily repeated.  “Announce to everyone that we’re both prettier and more popular than you!  We’d even let you be our fifth wheel, right Jess?”

“I’m not going stag,” Fulda insisted, and the table shook so hard I fell when she slammed her palm down on it.  “And I don’t need to.  I’m sure once people find out that no one’s asked me yet, I’ll have to fight pipsqueaks off with a bat.”

“More like a pencil,” Gina teased.  “Probably the real reason no one’s asked you is that you’re too short.  I know it’s hard for me to see you all the way down there!”

“What are –“ Fulda angrily sputtered, much to Gina’s amusement.  “I’m not short!  I’m taller than Jessica!”

“Are you?” Gina asked, placing her hands on her hips and peering down condescendingly.  “It’s hard for me to distinguish just how short people are compared to each other.  Even if that’s true, and I’m not saying it is, it might not be much longer.  Jess could still grow; she might hit 7 feet!  And you just might keep shrinking.  I know how you love shrinking.”

“Gina, we’ve been over this a dozen times.”  Fulda sighed in exasperation, blowing me a few inches over the smooth table’s surface.  “I wasn’t shrinking.  You were growing.  People don’t shrink.”

“You sound pretty confident in that for someone who loves shrinking so much.”  With how hard she had been pressing on this for months, I was shocked Gina had not let Fulda’s secret accidentally slip.  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll start again.  Every day you’ll wake up smaller, smaller, smaller.”  With each “smaller” her voice got higher and she drew her fingers closer together, grinning even wider.  “Then I’ll be able to pick you up and put you in my pocket.  Oh!  Then you could go to prom with your little boy-toy!  I’ll even wear white shoes, and you can use them as the background for just the cutest pictures!”

Feeling the need to break the tension, Jessica interjected.  “That might not be such a terrible idea.  I mean, think about it: aside from being not quite an inch tall, he’s just like any other student, and a pretty good one, I hear.  Plus, I know a lot of girls who say that they think the little guy’s cute.  He’s popular!  And if the height difference is an issue, well, Gina and I are both going with someone a lot shorter than us.  If more people ever shrink, they’ll need dates.  You’ll be a trailblazer!”

Fulda seemed mollified by the suggestion, or at least less inclined to take a swing at Gina, and rested her face in her hand.  “I just… it’s a little humiliating, isn’t it?  Like, I’m basically admitting the only guy who’ll spend time with me is smaller than my thumb and needs my constant protection so someone doesn’t squish him, aren’t I?”

Fortunately, Jessica was able to get a word in before Gina.  “If you want to look at it from the absolute worst angle, sure!  But I know there’s someone who doesn’t agree with that at all.”  She reached a hand toward me, thumb and forefinger primed to pinch, and set it down behind me.  Not wanting to be her prop I tried to scoot away, but the tips of her digits clamped down on my collar, holding me in place.  Jessica lifted me off the table easily, and my legs swung outward when she pulled me up.  As I dangled in front of her face, she looked down and grinned.

“What about it, little guy?” she asked, and batted my legs with the index finger on her other hand.  “Do you think it’d be humiliating if Fulda went to prom with you?”  She began shaking me back and forth by the collar and speaking out of the corner of her mouth like she was voicing a puppet.  “No, Jessica, I don’t think that at all!  I think she’d be glad to have someone to go with!”  She switched back to her normal voice to continue, “Oh, then why don’t you ask her?  Don’t you want to?”  Then she went back to the puppet voice.  “I do, but there’s no reason she couldn’t ask me, too!”  I would have been more upset about her putting words in my mouth had they not been my actual words.

Fulda held out her hand, palm upraised.  “Could you just give him here, please?  I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“And what if he wants to hang out with us, pipsqueak?” Gina asked.  “Maybe he wants to be with the pretty, tall popular girls instead of you?”

Luckily, Jessica did not heed Gina’s protests and promptly lowered me into Fulda’s waiting palm.  She let go of my collar and removed her hand, then Fulda quickly wrapped her fingers loosely around me.  Fulda took a step back then turned, and I was pushed against the warm, soft walls of her fingers.  Though she tried to keep me steady I was still bounced around.  I felt the tremors of every step she took travel through her body and wash over me.

Once we were back in her room, Fulda walked over to her desk and deposited me on top before slumping down in her chair.  I gazed up at her, and her glossy pink lips were cycling between quivering and an angry grimace.  Further up, though they were narrowed in fury, I saw more moisture than usual in Fulda’s cold blue eyes.  It seemed like she was on the verge of tears, but I could not tell whether it was from frustration, rage, sadness, or something else entirely.

I had no idea what to do.  I could not recall Fulda ever being sad in one of my stories, much less crying because of it, though I knew that, as a person and not just a character anymore, she was capable of it.  Not wanting to see her cry, I walked toward her and placed a hand on her fingertip, pressing gently into the warm, supple flesh.

Fulda’s finger recoiled from my touch and reflexively cocked back behind her thumb, and a heavy column of air hit me from above when she exhaled sharply.  I looked up, and her face had tightened into angry determination while she held her finger back at the ready.  After a few seconds, however, she relaxed, and let her finger unfurl.

“Oh, I know you’re just trying to help,” Fulda said.  She lifted her finger and gently stroked my chest with the tip of her finger.  “You can’t help it if you’re too small to really do anything, that’s my fault.”  She sighed and the blast of air caught me, knocking me off my feet and pushing me away from her.  Watching me get pushed back by her breath, Fulda smiled and let out a short roar of a giggle.  “Hey, that was funny!  It’s funny how small you are!”

Fulda swung her finger to the side, sliding me across her desk until I contacted the index finger on her other hand.  She let me rest there for a second before winding up and pushing me with her finger again, winging my feet so I spun around while sliding.  The world turned around me until I ran back into the first finger, where she flicked my legs with the tip of her fingernail, making me spin and go back the other way.  By now I was getting dizzy, but as long as I was on my back that would not be too much of a problem.

“I could do this all day,” she boomed, batting me from one hand to the other again.  “I don’t think I’ve played with you like this in months!  It’s so fun to play with such a tiny, helpless man.”  It was difficult to tell while she pushed me between her fingers and spun me, but I’m pretty sure she smiled.

When she finally stopped me by setting the tip of her right index finger down on my chest, she spent a moment gazing down at me.  Fulda rested her chin on her other hand and held me still until the world stopped spinning of its own volition.  “So.  Do you want to go to prom?”

“With you?”  I was a little disoriented from her batting me around still.

“That’s not what I asked, twerp,” Fulda replied, and gave me a light tap on the chest.  “Obviously if you’re going to prom, it’s with me.  I own you, remember?  And I can take you whether you want to go or not.”

“Yeah, I want to go.”  I knew it was important that someone did, otherwise some events later might have trouble.

“Okay then.”  Fulda gave me another tap covering my whole body and smirked.  “I just wanted to be sure whether I should call it a punishment for being disobedient, or a reward for being such a good toy.  And I want to do all the dorky prom shit, you know.  Limos, corsages, pictures, slow dances, all that stuff.  And I’m going to dress you up like a doll to go with my dress.”

“That’s… all fine.”

“I’m not asking you if it’s okay, I’m telling you it’s going to happen.”  She gave me another tap, then flicked me toward the center of the table so she could look straight down at me.  “And you better make sure I have a good time!  If you don’t…”  Fulda raised her hand and slapped the table, making the whole thing shake.  I flinched from the bang of impact, making her laugh again.

Fulda lowered her face to my level and leaned in close, puckering her lips.  “You know,” she purred, “if we’re going to prom together, I guess that kind of means we’re dating, doesn’t it?”  She inched closer, but just before her lips touched me she shot back up straight and laughed.  “Unless you suck, then I’ll have to break my favorite toy,” she added, pouting with a false whine.

Fulda reached over me and grabbed my collar, then plucked me off the table.  She held me in front of her face, letting me dangle from her fingers, then batted me so I swung like a pendulum.  “Since I might have to smash you soon, I should play with you while I can.”  Her finger batted me again, and her eyes followed my movements while she smiled.

“But, sadly, I can’t.”  Fulda lowered me back to the table and set me down, then let go of my collar.  “I’ve got so much to do now, and finding something that’ll go with my dress in your size is going to be quite an ask.  Maybe I’ll wear you in my jewelry.  We’ll see.”  With that, she got up and went over to her bed to get to work picking things out, leaving me to entertain myself on the table.