The doorbell rang out through the townhome, bouncing off walls and through the halls until it reached Callie, reclining on a beanbag chair deep in the basement, savoring the end of a long play from a long disbanded sludge metal trio. She ignored the doorbell. It was rare that she made time for herself, and having only recently discovered the now defunct, French band, ‘Conflagration of Time and Space’, she didn’t want to waste any of it dealing with people stupid enough to interrupt her personal time. A small snarl crossed her lips as the bell chimed again, and she suddenly had a vague, terribly vague sensation that maybe she'd ordered curry, and had forgotten about it in her reverie.

With a souring mood, and a sudden, driving desire for lamb in spicy gravy, Callie paused the stereo, almost causing her ears to ring as the sounds of harmonic bass and discordant guitar came to a jarring halt. She extricated herself from the cloying grip of the beanbag chair and began making her way up the stairs, her fuzzy slippers noisily slapping against her bare heel with every step. At the top of the stairs the doorbell chimed for a third time just as Callie threw open the door.

“What do you want?” She said, without even waiting for the door to reveal her visitor.

What it revealed wasn’t the usual driver from ‘Mumbai Munchies’, which darkened Callie’s mood even further, but her humors quickly buoyed when she recognized the already shame filled face of Steve, one of her previous clients. Steve wore a white t-shirt, and ratty jeans, but it was his face that intrigued Callie more than anything else. He was already looking down, avoiding her gaze, and Callie knew what that shoegazing, shameful look meant.

“Heeeey… dork. What brings you to my door?” Callie said with a wry grin, knowing full well what the answer would be.

“Um… Callie, hi…” Steve said, kicking invisible rocks on Callie’s doorstep. “I was… I was in the area…”

“Oh, really?” Callie said, leaning against her door frame. “You were ‘in the area’? Don’t you live on the other side of town?”

Steve was silent in response, his face down, but his eyes trying to gauge Callie’s mood. Callie’s grin widened into a sneer. She held out a hand.

“Phone, now.” Callie ordered.

The timid man, only a few inches taller than Callie, and clearly cut from a lifetime of athletic pursuits, almost jumped as her gesture. When he recovered from his shock, he immediately begin to fish through his denim pockets to produce the brick of plastics and electronics that she had demanded, only to wither as Callie’s grin momentarily faded.

“Unlocked, dweeb…” Callie ordered.

“Oh! Right!” Steve said, fumbling with his phone.

Once he’d thumbed in a few digits into the device, Callie snatched it from his hands. She stayed reclined against the doorframe as she pulled up Mumbai Munchies’s website and ordered a dinner portion of spicy lamb tikka masala, naan, laasi, and a backup order of chicken korma. She let the phone autofill the credit card and expiry date before hitting the security code.

“Code for the visa?” Callie asked, without looking up.

“Uh, it’s uh… ‘nine, nine, nine’...” Steve responded, rubbing his arm.

“Great.” Callie said, finishing the order and tossing the phone back to a startled Steven who just barely caught the phone after almost fumbling it three times. “You know the price, right?”

Steve, almost crouching as he caught his phone, looked up with a stunned look of relief, joy, and terror all at the same time. He nodded furiously as he met Callie’s eyes for the first time since ringing her doorbell. The look that Callie returned wiped all relief and joy from Steve’s face as he was suddenly confronted with his choice, having already made it with a short nod of his head.

“But I…” Steve started.

“Don’t care, dweeb.” Callie said.

It was done before Callie had even pushed herself away from the doorframe. Steve was gone, and where he had been, only a pile of clothes that he had worn. Callie continued to lean down and began to sift through the now derelict fabric until she found what she was looking for. There, clinging desperately to the waistband of his boxers, was Steve, shrunken down to only a half an inch tall, naked, and left with only his cell phone shrunken with him.

“I hope you’re ready…” Callie taunted. “Actually I don’t really care, but either way, you’re staying this way for at least the whole weekend.”

The diminutive face was hard to make out, but Callie had enough experience with shrunken faces that she recognized the look of abject horror when she saw it. She ignored the look on Steve’s face, or the completely inaudible sounds he attempted to make as she brought him to his new home for the weekend.

Lifting her heel, she revealed her sole, and the deep, dark recesses of her slipper’s toe. She casually dropped the shrunken Steve in, feeling him hit her arch, and slide down, over the ball of her foot, until he landed under her toes. Callie lifted her foot completely off the ground and tapped the toe against the floor, setting Steve into a comfortable, for her, position that she could squeeze and apply pressure to as she saw fit.

Almost immediately her phone began to vibrate with notifications. She chuckled as she pulled it from her pocket and saw Steve’s name show up, and then again, and again, and still more times. ‘Nothe whole weeknd!’, and ‘pls I have work!’, and ‘ur jokin rit?’, followed by many, many more similar messages from Steve on his only lifeline outside the steamy, sweaty depths of her fuzzy slippers. Callie replied with a curt, ‘don’t waste your battery dweeb’ before setting her phone to ‘do not disturb’ and then replacing the phone.

She descended the stairs, making sure to squeeze her new captive with every lift of her foot, and to press down with every footfall. She resumed her place on the beanbag, and resumed the screaming metal that filled the entire house, content to wait for her dinner, and enjoy the dual pleasures of obscure French sludge metal and the squirming sensation between her toes. By the time the track finished, she had forgotten who it was between her toes, but still enjoyed the wriggling well into the following week.