Josh was getting pretty sick of crawling around on feet. The surfaces were always so irregular; it was like crawling around on all fours in the forest. You never knew where to put your hands. The skin was always just a little sweaty, even when it looked like it wasn't, so your hands always came away just a little bit wet. Not to mention the smell. If Josh went the rest of his life without the odor of post-jog foot sweat, it would be too fucking soon. Josh went back to scrubbing, pushing all of his strength into every swing. He was on the right ring toe right now; if he could just finish this one up, he might be able to get back to his room before-

A sudden jerk threw him onto his stomach. He tried to clasp his arms tightly around the toe. His arms barely fit around the top. Then the whole toe, the whole massive foot he had spent the past hour scrubbing down was plunged down into the water bucket below. Before he could get his bearings underwater the whole thing flew back up into the sky, shaking violently. Josh found himself in the least fun game of toe rodeo he never thought he'd ever have to take part in. When the mini earthquake shook back down, he shot a glance back up. Way, way back up, at the piece of shit of a big sister he was currently clinging to. Skyscrapers never looked so smug.

Sam chuckled to herself, which to Josh was more like a distant rumbling. Like the sound thunder made before it struck.

"Oh go laugh it up, you huge bitch!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, which to Sam was more like a gentle whisper. Like the sound wind made when it rustled through grass on a nice summer day. 

"Did you just say something?" asked Sam, only half-sarcastically. She blew back down.

Josh felt it almost instantly, a brief blast of humid breath on him that would have thrown him off if it wasn't pressing him so tightly against the "ground" underneath.

"Did you?" she asked again, priming her cheeks again. Josh shook his head no. He wasn't even sure if the motion read up here, but he wasn't going to try and speak again. She smiled. On some level, she felt like she should feel bad for him, but she had been on the receiving end of way too many of his vulgar hateful rants pieced together from Infowars articles and edgy memes. If she had to hear him call her a d-word again she'd jam a scissor right into his neck. And, relative to that, this arrangement was way better. He got to work on his character or whatever, and she got some nice massages every day. Plus, there was just something so satisfying about watching him squirm around down there. It made her feel important.

Josh immediately went back to scrubbing. More water meant more ground to cover. He wasn't even sure if he was doing shit beyond just ticking her a bit here and there. It certainly didn't feel like it. God the salt was starting to go to his head a bit; he was getting a bit nauseous. The foot started shaking again, quicker than he had time to react to. The ground gave way. He was in freefall, and then was caught tight by the bend of a toe. There was he jammed underneath, between funky crap he hadn't managed to scrub off yet and a small sedan's worth of raw flesh and muscle he couldn't possibly outmuscle. So he stayed there, burying his unending rage as Sam wiggled her toes, deftly moving him around her feet like an experienced soccer player as she laughed up above, a chilling sort of boom that hit right deep in Josh's soul.

One more hour of this shit, then Fortnite. One more hour of this shit, then Fortnite.

Rebecca took great care in the sound of her ringtones. She knew that might seem odd to other people, her family included. Sometimes she spent hours in her bed, scrolling through countless showtunes, pop singles, and forgotten singer-songwriter ballads to find the right one that just... clicked. When she got her new puppy, she switched her home ringtone to "Werewolves of London". She had the title track off Hamilton for Syd, her eternal theater-dweeb-in-arms. When she was officially locked as class valedictorian she had "Sweet Victory" from that one Spongebob episode for all her ringtones for... well, that one wasn't really any of the three, but she really liked Spongebob. It was one of her thirty or so obsessions she had going for her. And she could hear the distinct ringtone she picked for Samantha a mile away. It was actually an original track, one the two had worked on together for a project in Music Composition Honors. Just thinking about it made her smile. She could just pick out the opening lyrics.

"You say it's your birthday! It's my birthday too, yeah!" rang her phone on her nightstand.

"Oh, poop!"

She carefully moved her right hand over to the phone, sliding it open carefully. She certainly didn't want any of that still-wet nail polish on her to get on the screen.

"Hey sexy!"

Rebecca smiled. "Hi Samantha! Happy birthday! I'm really sorry, I completely forgot!"

"It's fine! Thanks anyways, sis. How's stuff?"

"Well, I've been, uh, I've been relaxing today, mostly. This week's been a lot, if I'm being honest with myself."

"Stop the fucking presses. Becky Crawford is taking a day off. The world's going insane."

"Well, it's all your help, really. You showed me that cool app thing, and it's been a big help as of late."

"Soundcloud?"

"No, the other one! The..." Rebecca's voice sank to a whisper. "The shrinking thingy."

"Oh, PestIfied?"

"Yeah, that one."

"Oh no sis I just heard you were having rough times with your little brother, I know Will can be a little shit sometimes, so I just thought, hey, me and Josh are doing okay - aren't we Josh? - and I just wanted to spread the love! One sister to another, you know?"

"Well thanks for that anyways! Which actually reminds me..."

Rebecca looked down at her nails. She hadn't gotten them done in so long, and now she actually had someone to do it for her. Life worked out weird like that sometimes. Plus, she got to spend some quality time with Will, which ever since he entered high school had been coming less and less. He was becoming a bit of a brat, though she never liked admitting it to herself. And there he was now, the size of a cutesy little chess piece she could cradle in her hands, painting her nails like a good little brother ought to. And she did mean painting, he had his little bucket and roller and everything. Well, she wasn't sure how practical any of that was, but it was the thought that counted. It wasn't like the fumes could really hurt him like this. After a certain size, it seemed like the little guys were damn near invincible. At least she was having a good time.

Will was not having a good time. This whole scenario felt deeply uncomfortable to him. The painting wasn't too bad on its own, but the slight movements kept reminding him that he was really painting fingernails, the size of twin mattresses, belonging to a massive mountain he slept in the same house as. Well, not quite a mountain, but something quite close to one. It was as though every fiber in him was screaming at him to do something about the ridiculously massive creature that could damn near kill him with little more than a moment's whim. He could hear her breathing; he could even faintly hear the throbbing of her heart. When he was close enough, it drowned out his own heartbeat.

On her desk, he could look out and see the rest of her room. Except, it couldn't really be called a room at this size. It was more a lair. Her nerdy Albert Einstein poster was more a looming titan, judging on all who dared trespass. Her Debate Club trophies, looming monuments to greatness. Far away, her curtained window, an endless shroud separating two worlds. Every smallest detail of this dorky teenage girl's everyday life was, to the shrunken observer, magnified in meaning into something far worse. It was as though the whole world had grown alien and distant in the span of a few seconds.

"Though he doesn't seem to be doing much right now," remarked Rebecca, still on the phone.

On the other end of the line, Sam suddenly spun around on the couch, reclining out on the sofa and pushing Josh deep into fabric and/or foot. He was certainly between a rock and a hard place. Or... a foot and a hard place. A foot and a soft place? Two soft places? It didn't matter.

"Holy shit girl, why didn't you tell me you were having problems?"

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call then problems, it's just-"

"You want Will to do something, he's not doing it. You've got a problem."

"Well, I suppose so."

"How long have you been using the app?"

"For about a week now, I believe."

"Then he's not housebroken."

"Housebroken?"

"He's just not with the program, you know? At first, Josh was the same way. He even tried to bite me once!"

"That sounds terrible!"

"I mean I didn't really feel anything, and I think he hurt his jaw anyways, but the point is that usually if you've got your boy and he's not doing the shit you want him to it's because you haven't shown him who's boss."

"That sounds like how we've been training our dog, Robert Bobert."

"Rebecca everything about your life is perfect. Anyways, I got all these tips from this great Tumblr blog, TinyTrainingTips. You should totally check it out sometime! So here's what you've gotta do..."

Will was still dazed out in his little existential nightmare when he heard Rebecca start to move. Like, big movements. Her hand moved right over him, casting him in its shadow, ending the earlier call. She then held it straight up, as if she were taking a picture of him. Oh, so their weird ass session thing was ending early this time around. That sounded nice. Usually they went between 7 and 8 PM almost on the dot, the one time when Rebecca's constant punctuality was more blessing than curse, but if they were ending twenty minutes early he wasn't going to...

Snap. The world went white for a moment, as though he were blinded, then came back into color. As the glare wore off however, Will was beginning to realize that something was very, very wrong. He wasn't in her room, not at his regular size nor at the size he was at before. No, that wasn't right. As the world finally came back into focus, he realized exactly where he had gone. Or more specifically, where he hadn't gone. Yes, he was still on his big sister's desk. But he wasn't at nearly the same size.

Rebecca could barely even see her brother on the desk anymore. He was just a point, a grain visible only by virtue of the contrast against the color of the countertop. She felt somewhat bad doing this to him, but it was what Samantha said worked, and she always had good advice to give. She gave a small wave to the point, hoping he was responding nicely.

Will wasn't responding nicely. It was as if everything in the world suddenly stopped making any good sense at all. God, the end of the table was blurry off in the distance, the lamplight might as well have been a sun. And Rebecca, poor, sweet, innocent Rebecca, who always turned in her homework on time, who always wore a smile wherever she was, who always had something good to say about everyone, who walked with a pep in her step and a ray of sunshine in the world... she was impossible to rationalize. He could see her, he could visualize her, but he couldn't possibly understand her. Her breathing was like a storm, making air currents here and there. He saw her wave, and then felt it lift him up, up and up til he was near flying for half a second before crashing painfully back down to the ground. Perhaps he couldn't seriously get hurt here, but he could certainly feel hurt, and god damn did it hurt. Her smile, just her smile spanned hundreds of feet, she could swallow the whole school whole with plenty of room to spare, she could blink him out of existence without even realizing it. She was just... more. More than he was, more than he could ever be, a hundred, a thousand, a million Wills of this size wouldn't make up a tenth of what Rebecca was right now.

A god. He hated to think it, but right now, all things being as they were, she was simply godly. Anything that happened next was absolutely in her power; he couldn't do a thing about it. She could have been thinking about anything right then and it would have been the most important thing in the universe. A math test on Monday might as well have been the word of the gospel, because it meant a hell of a lot more to Will's life in that moment than anything else. His sister, with all of her neurotic tics and happy quirks and love and fear and shame was, for better or for worse, everything that mattered right now. How else did you explain a living person who could dwarf cities?

Will didn't realize it then, but he was screaming, louder than he ever screamed before, louder than he thought it was possible to scream, louder and louder til his words gave out and he had no more scream to give.

Then the flash, and whiteness, and he found himself sitting on the countertop. Not his normal size, not quite, more like a Pinocchio sitting on a workbench. He turned from her gaze.

"Are you okay?" asked Rebecca. She put her hand on his cheek, turning him to face her. And in that moment Will swore he saw into infinity. "You look off."

"Fine! I'm fine." Will said, brushing aside her worries.

"Okay..."

Another flash, then Will was off on his way, back to his room to spend the next few hours face down on his pillow, thinking long and hard about the world and his place in it.

Rebecca picked up the phone again, dialing up Samantha, who was falling asleep to The Office episodes on the recliner while suffocating Josh in her body heat underneath.

"Oh, hey Becky! Did it work, or did it work?"

"It worked, I guess. Seems kind of weirded out by the whole thing."

"Oh, that happened to Josh too. But don't worry, give it like a day and he'll be back to normal, plus he won't be annoying around the house."

"I guess..."

"Hey, hey, don't feel bad. Now he's keeping busy not doing stupid shit with his friends, and you're keeping less busy, not worrying so much about work and shit. It's a win-win. Really he should be thanking you."

"You're right. I just was psyching myself out there."

"That's the spirit! Hey, hold on a sec, I've gotta go to sleep soon, probably just gonna fall asleep on the couch. Bad for the back but, eh, only live once."

"Yeah, I've got a Calculus test to study for, see you Monday!"

"See you Monday."

And while her friend went right away to studying, there Sam drifted into a nice sleep, letting the tiny, beating fists of her little brother send her off into a pleasant dream.

It was nice being the birthday girl.