At some point in your future shrinking technology will become a staple of big corporations everywhere, in fact they've found such good ways to monetize it that they've spent a whole lot of money stopping the public from receiving it, the same as those corps did with diamonds way back when, this is purely to inflate the cost. But for this reason it's never been available to anyone other than Tronic. It's expensive and full of extreme safety protocols, you get to inspect smaller objects and walk around miniature cities but human interaction is strictly prohibited, you are even carried in small pods when initially shrunk to prevent contact. Virtual Reality was able to do this back in 2020, this is nothing special, the only reason you'd want to do it is for that real experience, knowing that what your eyes are viewing is real. The rooms are sterilized and white, it's mostly for people to kill time but it's so limited.

All in all, the experience could be so much more, nobody really knows the extent of how it works as there's no room for testing which may be why it's limited, many people say it's just to prevent legal issues if anything happens, they may be forced to hand over documents on it's functionality which they cannot afford to let leak, there are theories that accidents have already happened and people have went missing. Nobody knows for certain.

For me it's a big waste of time unless I'm allowed to go where I want and see what I want, not pre-made rooms and generic objects... all of my friends agreed, which is why we concocted a plan.

-----

"That's possibly the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard and I've heard a lot of dumb shit, I hang around stoners, you feel me?"

"It's not! They just make it seem scary so people follow the rules, people do it all the time, Jayden."

"Lily if people did it all the time then where are they? huh? oh yeah, they are stuck that size or dead because they can't get back in. You big idiot. You havent even thought about this for longer than one second so I'm already out."

"That's because the idiots that attempt it dont think about it properly, but we will, the issue is that ALLLL those people want to join in, so they shrink as a group and leave, whereas we will have a couple of bigs help us escape and get back to size, then we repeat again the following day in reverse positions. Everybody wins!"

She was desperate to do something fun, last week it was exploring an abandoned building and this week was just crazy, she didnt want to break the law, she just wanted an adrenaline rush.

I'm watching these two argue over their next big crazy idea and chime in my two cents-

"I think it's possible. Sounds sick actually, I always thought their tours sucked dick, we should show how cool shrinking really can be, we'd never be bored every again."

"Exactly, even Liam agrees and he always thinks logically about this stuff." Lily continued her perusasion charade

"This is so obviously a step too far, imagine what would happen if anything even remotely heavy landed on us, we'd be gone, just like that."

"I'd be there to protect you on the first run and also everyone knows that you're invincible when you're smaller, trust me, I know everything about this shrinking stuff."

"Really? Fine, I'll come on one condition, if we get caught, you both take the fall for me." said Jayden

"Done, pussy boy" Lily joked

Adventure awaits.

--------

"Hello, welcome to the Tronic Experience Centre. Will all three of you be taking the experience together?"

"Yes ma'am" Jayden said confidently

"Right this way"

The woman was wearing a labcoat, she came across as very sophisticated and well spoken, they likely only gave her a labcoat to make her appear more confident, wouldnt surprise me if this boring dump even had real scientists working here who knew what was going on.

Lily was in the waiting area acting as a separate customer, the plan was now in effect.

We entered the sterilized room.

"Please remove mobile phones and any electronic devices."

"Absolutely." Jayden agreed.

I placed my phone case last into the box as another man put the lid on it and placed it under the table, I pat my phone in my pocket with the case removed, no way we're leaving behind our communication prospects if we're exiting this building.

We entered the pod and begun the nervous procedure, the pod shook for about 3 seconds before it stopped.

"Did.. did something break?" Jayden said is a confused tone.

"Seems like it, that wasnt very-"

Suddenly the pod started shaking, it must be starting for real now, but no, I glanced out the glass door to see ourselves rising miles into the air. We were already tiny and now we're being lifted.

We were dropped onto a table and the speaker inside the pod crackled on.

"Thank you for experiencing Tronic Technologies, you may now exit the pod, your experience expires in 30 minutes."

We looked at each other with nervous dread about what we were going to attempt. Jayden nodded.

We exited the pod to see a giant glass of water, it was way bigger than I ever imagined something solid glass could be, I reached out to touch it, it was very cold. This was more surreal than I could have ever imagined, next to it was some kind of device, it had a cable running out of it, it's possible the woman was using this to tinker with our pod.

"Liam focus bro, we don't have much time to do this."

"Right."

I picked up my phone, it was still working, why did they remove them from us then?

*ring* 

Lily instantly picked up

"Hey, are you ready?"

"We've just exited the pod, we need to find a way off the table first before you can guide us."

"Yeah you'll need to find a safe way down guys."

"We'll just jump since we're invincible, that will save us time"

"NO, I mean- that's uh- bad because you can... still injure your ankles just like in real life, so like we uh, need you guys in good shape to run and stuff. Find a safe way down."

"Makes sense, we'll let you know."

There was a cable attached to that device I saw earlier.

"We can trail down the cable of that massive device, we have to make it snappy though."

"Agreed, there is no other connection to the floor, lets go." I then started to follow behind Liam towards the device.

"Lily we're ready for your directions, make it fast."

"You got it, okay, the space underneath the doors appears to be blocked by a black wall but if you get close enough you'll see that it's not a wall, they are brustles, you can technically push your way through them to get under the door and into the corridor, theoretically."

We stared at these monolithic brustles that were twice our height, we began to push through them, we felt extremely cold air which signalled to us... the corridor.

We pushed our way through to the other side to be met with an extraordinarily long corridor, with doors all over it and on both ends.

"We're through, which way?"

"It should be the door at the end of the corridor on your left."

"This is gonna take about 30 minutes just to cross this corridor, man." Jayden disappointingly muttered

"then lets get to it, too late to go back now."

Before we could even get moving we felt feint rumbling, the vibrations were coming from our right side, the door swung open at extreme speed for it's size, only to be greeted with another female scientist walking towards us.

"Lily there's a person coming!"

"THEN HUG THE WALL YOU IDIOTS"

We pushed our backs towards door in order to avoid her footsteps that could incapacitate us until our escape plan was too late, we were already too tight for time. The earthquakes got stronger and stronger, we struggled to stay upright, we held the wall tight. Suddenly the quakes stopped, we opened our eyes to continue our quest only to be faced with a giant pair of shoes standing in front of our door, my eyes followed upwards very slowly up the womans body to see her face. She was peering into our door.

Her black flats were about a metre away from our face, she tip-toed in order to see high enough into the doors window, blasting the sound of wrenching leather into our ears, a soft sound that you would never hear at this volume was now very loud. The leather sounded like it was being ripped to shreds.

She dropped to her flat feet again and picked up the walkie talkie on her belt.

"Hey Cathy, how long on Room 13?"

She paused briefly listening to 'Cathy' speaking on the other end:

"Room 13 clients went in at 1:18pm so about 22 minutes."

"I can't really see them on the table"

She pivoted her foot on her heel, giving us an eye filling view of her entire shoe sole, filled with dust & dirt, she began tapping her shoe against the floor lightly for her, very heavily for us.

THUMP THUMP

"There are indoor-" THUMP "-areas though." THUMP

"Yeahhh..." THUMP

"I'll check again later" THUMP

THUMP

She placed her foot down and pivoted on the ball of her foot to turn and start walking down the corridor, disappearing from our view.

"That was close as fuck, my ears are still ringing from that. That was only her shoe."

"Tell me about it man, goddamn." Jayden said in a surprised tone

"Are you guys okay??"

"yeah chill, we almost got stomped on, luckily we're invincible, I was just worried she would notice we were there."

Lily continued to guide us in her bossy tone- "Continue to the end of the corridor, we've wasted time"

We reached the waiting room after walking through the corridor with plenty of banging shoes against the ground passing us by.

"We're here, where are you??"

"I'm outside, okay so you see the chair closest to you? I sat there earlier, there is a coin under the chair right?"

"Yeah we see it"

"Thats my ground marker, go stand there, I'll be approaching in 30 seconds"

"I cant believe this is actually working" Jayden excitedly said

We stood on the coin under this metal chair in the waiting room, loud phones and people could be heard around us, amplified by our size, we had to cover our ears the entire time we were there.

We then saw Lily walk into the facility, she looked just like herself from the door, then she began approaching the chair and our eyes got wider, she was getting bigger and bigger as she approached us.

THUMP THUMP her sneakers sounded as they came to a stop right in front of the chair.

"ooo, a quarter!"

Suddenly a hand came down next to us, the largest hand we had ever seen in person, it was unbelievably massive.

"get on" she whispered under the chair.

We jumped on and then we were away, we made it at last.

------------------

"WOOOOOOO, did you see how fuckin easy that was??" Lily shouted causing us to cover our ears.

"Lily, volume!" I shouted into my phone

"Oh sorry, but what should we do first? Giant food? ooo oo how about I build you guys a maze OORR we play hide & seek?"

"I want to do all of those." I agreed

"me too man!" Jayden added

*knock knock*

"huh?"

"Guys someones at the door."

"Lily dont answer it-"

Lily opened the door.

"Hello?" A woman was standing with her hands in front of her, she was wearing very formal clothing, I was instantly nervous as I knew exactly where this was going.

"Hello, I'm Samantha from the Tronic Technology Corporation, you have something that belongs to us."

"I don't know who you are, you must have the wrong house-"

The woman forcibly pushed the door open.

"Hey you cant come in here like that!"

"Sure, I can, you have stolen private property that belongs to Tronic, it's worth billions and with that kind of money we can do whatever we goddamn well please. Now hand it over!"

"Hand what over? I didnt even steal anything from your stupid company."

"No, my dear, you stole someONE, those very someones have our drug flowing through our veins and so we are here to retrieve it before this gets out of hand."

"You cant!"

"Cuff her, now."

The man restrained Lily leaving her standing helpless next to us.

The giant woman approached us, her brown hair dripping down to the floor as she crouched, her blue eyes staring into our souls, below her purple heels held up her immeasurable weight.

"Hello boys, did we enjoy ourselves? surely I dont need to explain why sneaking outside our safe facility with a billion dollar drug flowing through your system is a terrible idea, do I now?"

We trembled with no word of a response. The woman rose quickly to her full height staring straight down at us.

"No? allow me to educate you for your own safety."

Her leg muscles began to shift, lifting her massive foot into the air, rising above our ant-sized bodies, she hovered her heel for a brief moment and then began to drop it slowly.

"You never really know who might be walking around..."

It came closer to our bodies

"Who might be totally unaware of your existence."

Her dirty rubber sole touched our bodies as we lay on our backs to evade the shoe.

"NO" screamed Lily

"Who might just walk all over you."

She didn't hold the moment for long as she quickly lifted her foot off of us and placed it on the ground.

"Thankfully for you I'm just the educator, we're not really in such a predicament are we?"

Lily stood with tears in her eyes, shocked as to what she just saw. The pain inflicted from a stomp must be immeasurable, I am thankful that I didn't have to experience that.

The woman quickly scooped us up and dropped us into her breast pocket.

"Where are you taking them?!" screamed Lily

"Relax my dear, we're taking them back to our facility to have them reverted properly with the drug purged from their system, they'll be back in no time. Unfortunately for you, no human was ever meant to be this small for longer than 3 hours, so they'll need to stay at our facility for a few days to receive tests."

"Do you understand?"

Lily nodded in a less panicked but worried look.

------------

I awoke to find myself being pulled out of the pocket, it appeared to be the same woman. We were in a dark room.

"Listen carefully, you have been permanently shrunk due to your idiot negligence, there's nothing we can do to reverse it, we also cant risk you telling the general public or potential lawyers about what happened, we've deleted your records of ever being at our facility and nobody will ever know what happened to you. You made a BIG mistake."

"What? you cant do this, I wont let you keep us away!"

"You can certainly try my small friend, I've been through this situation a lot, they never come back. But I will wish you good luck with that regardless."

"NOOO" I began wriggling inbetween her index finger and thumb, trying to get lose from her insanely strong grip.

"What do we say... sneakers? heels? oooo, how about these."

She was facing a pair of white flats, they had markings on the leather half way, indicating they had been bent a lot, likely from walking, but they werent dirty white, so they werent terribly old either. Where were we, what was going on!

"If you try to contact anyone or even think about escaping, we will shrink Lily, we will shrink your family and completely obliterate them, they will never be found ever again, this is your own fault, do you understand?"

"YOU CANT DO THIS"

"You have 10 seconds to say you understand"

10.. 9... 8...

"PLEASE"

7... 6... 5...

"ILL JUST MOVE OUT OF TOWN IF YOU RESIZE ME, ILL BE OKAY WITH THAT."

4... 3... 2...

"Fine!! Just please dont hurt them..."

"Good. Away you go"

She dropped me into the shoe and began taping me down.

"I'm sure you won't last long. Even if she could possibly feel you somehow. At least you got to have some fun though right?" She got up and began leaving

Last long? Lily? They were trying to torture me, using the very friend that helped us perform this plan.

The woman left the room as I struggled to remove the duct tape from my ant sized body, I was taped firmly into a dark crater in a white flat shoe, unable to move or scream for help, my pleas were pointless...

Hours later a woman had entered the room, it wasn't just any woman, it was Lily herself. They could've just caged me up somewhere or killed me as a regular sized person themselves, but that woman went out of her way to torture me, for this to be done to me by someone else that cared about me, why would she go to such lengths?

Whatever the case, I needed to get her attention but... they said they would hurt her if I told her anything or tried to escape, should I fight it?

She seemed happy and innocent, this wasnt the side of her I'd seen. She got into bed and fell asleep as I thought endlessly about my upcoming torture that I'd have to endure.

-------

When I woke up I felt my world shaking, the shoe I was present in was moving violently, I saw her face through the opening staring down, did she see me? she then placed the shoe back down in front of a chair and took her seat, she didn't and this was it.

Her massive foot appeared, bare and pale, her toes wriggled at the entrance, the glossy pink nails glistening in the light before they entered complete darkness and solitude, the foot raced towards me as I shouted, the massive soft soles pressing onto my face and body, covering my mouth, that similar leather creaking I heard recently from the woman at the door, but now amplified, I was now the creaking leather, doomed to face a trampling day ahead. The sole was touching me, but it wasn't putting any serious weight on, she must have still been seated, the back of her flat suddenly kicked open and began swaying back and forth, pushing in fresh oxygen as I shook around, I felt like my body had no gravity, she was dangling her flats off of her feet simply for fun. I could get lucky but she was bound to rise eventually.

She eventually placed her feet forward and flat, she loosened them and placed her foot on the heel area of the shoe, she was kicking them on and off playfully, she then began pushing her foot in and out the shoe slowly as if she was bored or distracted, her bare sole rubbed furiously against my entire body building pressure that felt painful, what was this? it felt extremely real, this pain.

She must have been distracted on her phone before running her errands, wait.. her phone, my phone!

I used my arms that were at my side to begin fumbling around in my pocket, only to find my very own phone that I snuck in, they had no idea I had it. I called Lily in hopes of her being my saviour, not my torturer.

"Hey Liam! How are you feeling, better I hope?"

"Hey Lily I need your help!"

"Why whats up? are they hurting you?"

"I just-" the words echoed in me. "We will shrink everyone you love and obliterate them"

Was it worth the risk? they found us so quickly, they would do it again and this time Lily would be tortured and my family who never did anything wrong, I deserved this, I had to take this. Her gigantic toes wiggled above me, seeing my reflection in her pink shiny nails. Look at you, pathetic, dont ruin everyone else for yourself. You deserve this, it will be over soon.

"Nothing, just wanted to see how you were."

"I'm great, just happy you guys made it out okay."

This was my time to learn some valuable information for the torture ahead.

"Made it out okay? but we are.. were invincible. Out of curiosity what are the limits of the shrinking tech, like if something bad happened to us? like that woman earlier when we went under the door."

"Oh, you mean if she stomped straight on top of you guys!" she snickered, I could hear the smile in her voice as she spoke.

"Yeah, would we stay in our human forms and just feel lots of pain? I'd... like to know. Since- since it was such a close call and all." I was doing mental prepration for what was to come.

Her massive soles continued to hang out her shoes, above me, her soft skin inches from my face so close that I could see the wrinkles and creases in it, moving every few seconds, my eventual enemy was so close.

"Oh that? hahaha, I made that up you idiot."

"You did what?"

"I needed to talk Jayden into the gig, you knew that. It's no big deal Liam."

"So what happens Lily?!" my voice was trembling

"You're lucky you got out whilst you did, lets see, first of all the weight of regular humans is at least 500 fold of what you weigh when shrunk, so yeah you'd get straight up crushed."

"c- c- crushed?"

"Yeah, you know, mulched, red pasted, compressed into oblivion? that weight is immense, there would be so little of you left that nobody would even recognize your body. Have you ever stepped on an ant before?"

My breath went cold, my heart sank to my stomache. This was the end of the line.

"I- I-"

"Hey Liam, I'm sorry, I thought you knew about all that stuff, I thought we were just lying to get Jayden to go. You're safe now that's what matters."

She says as her sole continues to loom above you.

This is what the Tronic woman was talking about, when she was threatening my family, because you can die, this whole time, death was looming over me all that time and I walked right into it with no care in the world. The risk of death was too high, I'd have to take this risk to get myself to safety and I'll just take everyone with me to some place safe.

"Lily, listen to me very carefully I need your help, I'm still shrunk. I'm inside your shoe, that crazy scientist woman put me here, please get me out but dont tell anyone! Okay? Lily?"

I looked at my phone, 0% battery.

You heard above-

"What kind of help? Liam? Liam??"

She called Jayden, but he didn't pick up either.

"Weird. Guess I'll go there."

Not now, I'm not ready.

I started to struggle with tears in my eyes, her chair pushed backwards as she was preparing to stand, I wriggled furiously as her feet began to enter her shoe, the soles covered all remaining light plunging me into darkness.

"LILY NOOOO, PLEASE, HELP"

You struggled so hard you almost broke your own bones trying to free yourself from this thick tape.

The soft soles touched your entire body, the smell of lavender filled your senses as the feet lay rested on top of your ant sized body. The pressure began to build as she stood up.

"NOOOOOOOO-"

Your body was plunged into eternal red as her sole crushed your body instantly, your spine snapped in half erupting your body into a world of pain, followed by the ball forcing your organs upwards through your mouth, her toes wiggled before resting onto the soft insole pressing hard to hold her relative hundreds of tonnes of weight, the rest of your body wasnt as lucky as it instantly compressed deep into the insole turning you into a half-inch paste that splattered up Lily's clean sole.

Lily has risen to her feet and sighed heavily.

"We got far too lucky this time..."

She turned and began her walk to the facility, every step, every compression of hundreds of tonnes, her squelching steps further ridding of what once was Liam, his skull flattened and unrecognizable, his body mulched. 

As Lily reached the facility after a 15 minute walk, she sat herself down onto the very same chair she previously did to place her platform coin, in fact, she leaned down and saw the very same coin. A smile crossed her face as she thought about the great adventure they had, despite so short lived.

Her smile disappeared as she fumbled her toes around as she felt a small piece of rock, she slipped her flats off and inspected her foot, she picked the pebble out but noticed the red splodge on the ball of her foot, she looked disgustingly confused, she lay her foot against the empty waiting room floor and began scraping backwards, creating a red smear across the floor.

"Gross." She said as she slipped her flats back on.

---------

A few minutes later...

"Lily, I'm sorry but I have some terrible news, Liam didn't make it through the night, I was afraid this would happen due to the excessive shrinking. I'm very sorry."

"Through the night?" Lily said with anger & confusion in her voice.