The job listing had said "bartop", and it advertised the most George had ever seen for a shrunken job, half the minimum wage for a healthy person. The job listing said nothing else. George didn't mind, though, he needed a job, any job, and the options for a shrunken person were almost non-existent.

The club itself was exceptionally exclusive. George rarely saw more than a very small handful of people in the club at any time and everyone present dressed to a degree of wealth he’d never experienced before. He’d also never seen anyone actually enter or leave the club. From his post at the bar, George couldn’t see the guarded and locked entrance for the guests, and the thought of being caught on the carpeted floor filled George with an unimaginable dread. This left George to his post at the end of the bar, an extremely poorly enforced safe zone between his ladder up to the bartop and the kitchen, and a bathroom for shrunken employees that George himself was largely responsible for maintaining as the only places he felt even remotely secure.

It became immediately clear that George was beneath the notice of the club's clientele. When any of the titans overhead did see him dashing from his post, armed with a fresh napkin to address some careless spill on the polished wood bartop, they simply acted as though they hadn't. At best, there would be no recognition from the customers of a job well done. At worst, he could end up like Sam, a man who had been hired with George and lasted only a week before he failed to heed an uncaring patron at the bar, and had ended up under the bottom of a copper mug. With the majority of his bones shattered, but the patron more concerned with spilling their Moscow mule, Beth had told George that the patron had just pressed a little harder with the drinkware, and popped Sam under it. That had been George’s first time working the bartop, and it had taken dozens of napkins to clean what remained of Sam up.

George shook off the memory of Sam. George did everything he could to not end up like Sam. George was attentive, he watched patrons’ drinks, he watched patrons’ hands, he watched patrons’ moods. He also spent no longer than necessary outside of what he considered to be his safe-zones. His job involved cleaning spills off the bar top, and that, to George, meant he’d dash out with a fresh napkin, wipe the spill with a manic hurry, and then immediately bolt back toward the napkin dispenser and tap built into the bar that served as his post. And besides, George reasoned, Sam had been squashed more than three weeks ago, four to be exact.

The club never had a crowd, it cost too much just to get in to attract a large number of people. But even for their extremely exclusive clientele, Tuesday night was almost barren. George didn’t mind, it wasn’t like the place was in any danger of shutting down, and less club goers meant less of a chance of a fatal foul up. No one had even posted up at the bar, with the only members sequestered in their private booths. With it being nearly closing time, George was confident the night would be easy money.

His hopes were dashed as he watched a shadow in the club materialize into something solid. A shimmering phantom in the dim light became a young woman in a gold halter maxi dress, her leisurely stride bringing her ever closer to the bar. In her right hand, George could see an old fashioned glass, still half full of amber liquid. She was adorned with gold jewelry and makeup that stood in contrast to her dark skin, but complimented her dress and shoes. Even in the dim light, she was nearly radiant as she approached the bar. She sat at the bar without any hint of intoxication, a picture of perfect grace, save for her drink, which clipped the bar as she moved to set it down, splashing a bit of the alcoholic contents onto the polished wood surface.

George’s entire task was to keep the bar wiped down, and so he grabbed a napkin from the dispenser next to him and sprinted out to where the spill had occurred. With any luck, he could wipe it up, and return to his post before he was even noticed. As he made it to where the spill was, his hope to remain unnoticed was dashed as the woman in gold was already watching him. She rested her head on one hand propped up on the bar, and unlike all the other patrons, didn’t take her eyes off George as he closed the distance to the spill. It made George nervous.

There hadn’t been much to clean up, but George worked quickly. Within a matter of seconds he had all of the spilled cocktail up off the bar, as though it had never happened. He spun on his heels, and with the same feverish speed that he’d dashed out with, George began the sprint back to the relative safety of his napkin dispenser and his post at the end of the bar.

Without any warning, George slammed into, and bounced off of, a palm that dropped in front of his return path on the bar. His collision with the palm hadn't hurt at all, to the contrary, the palm was soft and smelled of fragrant lotions, but the surface of the bar was decidedly less appealing as he fell on his ass.

For a moment, George sat, trying to contemplate what had happened, before following the hand, up passed the dangling, thin, gold bracelets, along the unblemished deep brown skin, over the gold fabric of the halter dress, and up to the beaming smile on the face staring straight down at him. The woman wearing the gold dress complimented her attire with a warm golden lipstick, framing her radiant teeth spread in a smile that didn’t reassure George. She rested her head on her other hand as she blocked George's path back to his post.

"You missed a spot." She said, still smiling.

The hand that had blocked him passed overhead, the bracelets clinking, back nearer where she sat. It stopped and her index finger came down, a finger with a golden, almond shaped nail matching her lips in warm golden color pressed on the wood surface to guide George to his supposed oversight.

George knew better than to argue. During George’s second week, Beth had informed him that a coworker named Bill had told a drunken patron 'no' on his first night. A few hours later, Beth had tasked George  with cleaning what had remained of Bill out of the carpet after hours. It had taken three hours to remove the red stains, tracked as they were from where the patron had deliberately stomped Bill into a paste, and then mingled around the bar, leaving a bit of Bill in every step.

George shook off Bill’s memory and hustled over to where her finger remained and immediately fell to his knees, wiping away with the blanket size napkin he'd carried with him. There was nothing on the bartop, he'd wiped down the area before attempting to run back to his post, but the memory of the last bartop attendant to disagree with a patron kept him working.

"And here." The woman said. Her finger slid along the bar closer to where she sat.

George looked up at her, still resting her chin on her other hand, still smiling down, the warmth of her smile complimented by the warm colors of her makeup. Although there was no malice in her face, George could also see that she was already deep into a cocktail that she had set on the bar before stopping him. The next spot she suggested he had missed was relatively close, so George didn’t bother climbing to his feet, instead crawling over to continue wiping away at the bar.

“And here, too.” The woman continued, sliding her finger to just in front of where she sat at the bar.

George shuffled toward where she indicated, almost directly under where she sat. This time, she kept her finger still as George did his best to reclean around it. He wiped and scrubbed, careful not to touch her golden nail or her skin as he moved around her finger. He wiped in front of her nail, he wiped under the pad of her finger, he wiped under the shadow of her hand.

At this distance her dark skin practically shone with the thriving radiance of someone who could afford all of life’s most healthful food, effective medicines, and cutting edge hygiene products. She also smelled of wealth, too. Although she had doubtless been drinking, while in her shadow, George could only smell an oud aura that carried with it an earthy scent. It likely wasn’t overpowering to someone of her own size, but here, literally beneath her, George could suddenly no longer smell the bar’s disinfectant, or the booze, or anything else. He could smell nothing but the dark woman in gold above him. As he neared completion of his manufactured task, she lifted her finger and returned her hand to her glass, an old fashioned glass with a thick bottom.

“If you don’t need anything else…” George said, standing up.

He was caught off guard when the glass she held came down between him and his path away, but this time he had only been walking instead of his sprint, so unlike his collision with her palm, George was merely knocked off his feet by the impact of the glass on the wood.

“No, I think you should stay there.” The woman said.

It hadn’t just been the woman’s insistence that George clean an already spotless bar, or the steadily closer she drew him with each superfluous request, but all of it together, especially with he way out deliberately barred by the amber liquid and glass in front of him, suddenly made George very nervous. He pulled his napkin up to his chest, fully aware it would offer no more protection against the woman in gold than a child’s blanket would against nightmares and monsters.

The woman’s finger began tracing the lip of her glass, running around the smooth glass edge. The glass vibrated under her finger slightly, gently ringing as she ran the tip of her finger around it. Her gaze was relaxed, but unwavering in its fixation on George, but he couldn’t help but fearfully switch between matching her gaze, the glass that had come down in front of him, or the finger idly running circles around the glass.

“You did an admirable job cleaning up.” The woman said.

She lifted the glass to her lips and allowed a gentle stream of cocktail to pass over the glass and into her mouth. Although she took her time, she imbibed relatively little of the drink, savoring its scent and flavor as she sipped. When she set the glass back down, it bore the gold print of her lips along part of its rim.

“But I have to say…” She said, returning her chin to her hand. “Your attitude is all wrong.”

“M...my attitude?” George asked, the fear surging in him.

“Yes, your attitude.” She said, her voice still playful. “For example, when I tell you something, like ‘you missed a spot’, you need to beg for my forgiveness for having to identify your own job to you.”

“I… I’m sorry, I d...didn’t think…” George stammered.

“And don’t interrupt me.” She said.

“Y...yes ma’am!” George acknowledged.

“‘Mistress.’” The woman corrected him.

“Yes, mistress!” George said.

“Very good. Now let’s work on your body language. Wait, before that, what’s your name?” She asked.

“My name is George.” George stated.

“‘My name is George…?’” She intoned a question, forcing George to identify his mistake.

“My name is George, mistress!” He shouted.

“Very good. But I don’t think ‘George’ is very fitting for you.” She said. “I think… hmmm… ‘Tiny’ is a more appropriate name, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Y...yes, mistress.” George said.

“Good. Now that we’ve got that sorted, Tiny, when you’re speaking with me, I expect you to be on your hands and knees in front of me, with your head down.” She said, she highlighted her expectation by returning her finger to the bartop, a golden nail pointing right in front of her near the edge of the wood.

George was stunned. Plenty of unaffected individuals had treated him poorly, and he’d seen a blatant disregard for shrunken persons’ health and safety, but this was the first time he’d ever been both acknowledged and demeaned in such a direct and purposeful manner. But George didn’t see any alternative, he abandoned his napkin and pitched forward onto his hands and knees, he crawled forward toward where the woman in gold’s finger waited. It didn’t take him long to reach the fingernail and still unsure, George looked up once to confirm she was still watching him before dipping his forehead down to the bar.

“Very good, Tiny!” She said, with more enthusiasm than she’d displayed previously.

She removed her finger nail, and George could only see out of his peripheral vision as her hand returned to her drink. The gentle chimes of her wrist jewelry was joined by the crystalline clinking of the ice in her glass as she took another delicate sip. To George, the act of her savoring a sip of old fashioned took hours, leaving him to consider all the horrible possibilities that may come about from his perceived disobedience. He sighed with relief when he heard the glass come back down where it had been.

The woman in gold gave out a low, almost inaudible chuckle. Her finger, the one that he had directed him from imagined stain to imagined stain on the bar, began to trace around him. It was a chilling reminder of just how small he was to see the digit to easily longer than he was tall, effortlessly slide around him, the woman's hand and arm above, and the sound of her jewelry almost musical as her arm moved.

“Now, Tiny, let’s talk about my problem.” She said, finally halting her finger’s journey around him.

“H...how can I help, mistress?” George said, almost shouting with his head to the bar.

“It’s my drink.” She said. “It’s woefully inadequate, Tiny, like so much else.”

"I'll be happy to have the bartender pour you a new drink, mistress." George offered, eager for any excuse to get away. "What would you care for?"

George was left waiting for a response. He had expected her to simply tell him what she had been drinking, it looked to be an old fashioned, so he could relay the order to Beth for a fresher cocktail to be built, but silence hung over him.

The response came in an unexpected form. George almost leapt up as the deluge of warm liquid hit his back. Almost immediately the fluid began to flow over George. It flowed down his back to his head, over his sides, coating every part of him in a viscous and bubbly liquid that soaked into his clothing and into every crevice it could. The stream of fluid didn’t stop, George could feel it continue to pour down on him as he tried to understand what was happening. It wasn’t until he heard the sound of the woman above him, the unmistakable sound of expectorating, that George realized the liquid pouring over him, and the blast of it that capped off the torrent, was the woman in gold letting her saliva spill out onto him.

The spit was thick and pungent, laden with the scent of the woman’s mouth, the telltale scent of bitters, and the burn of the rye whiskey that infused her saliva. There was so much flooding over George that he had to shake his head to try to keep it out of his face, out of his nostrils and mouth, but he failed miserably in every aspect. George had to fight through his coughing. He hadn’t expected the deluge of spit, but he was also still horrified at the thought of what she might do if she felt he didn’t respond correctly, or quickly enough for her tastes.

“Well, Tiny?” She asked. “What am I drinking tonight?”

“An old fashioned, mistress!” He said between chest-wracking coughs. “You’re drinking an old fashioned!”

“Good.” The woman said, George imagined she was still smiling. “Stay there.”

George knew better than to disobey, but on his hands and knees, his head bowed down to the bar itself, and her spit slowly soaking into his skin and pooling around where he knelt, he had to fight the urge to run away in a panic. Only the knowledge that he wouldn’t make it far stopped him from breaking and running. Still, the warmth of her spit was quickly cooling, and George was beginning to shiver.

“The last bartop employee here was remarkably poor at following instructions.” The woman said. “I’m happy to see you’re better at following instructions, Tiny.”

Even though some of his vision was obscured by spit, she hadn’t allowed him to even wipe it away, he could see out of his peripheral vision the woman’s finger, a dark column capped in a golden nail, dip into the amber liquid of her drink. She swirled her finger in her old fashioned, the clinking of the ice on the glass ringing out as George tried to calm himself down.

"I'd imagine you can smell the problem already, Tiny, but…" She said. “Have a taste and tell me what’s wrong.”

George finally looked up from the bar, relieved to finally be able to pull his face out of the pool of saliva, and took a deep breath as he threw his head up out of the spit. Greeting him was the same almost pointed gold finger nail that had been his tormentor since he first dashed out to wipe up a minor drop of alcohol on the bartop. At the tip of that golden painted, almond shaped nail, a drop of her cocktail clung. The amber sheen of the drink was more reflective than even the satin gold of the nail polish, and looked almost like a drop of honey hanging off of her nail.

George slowly lifted himself up to the drop, it was yet another reminder of how small he was. Her fingertip was about the size of his head, and the droplet of liquor hanging off it would be an impossible draught for him to take. But fear drove him forward. He pressed his face into the drop and tried to drink down as much as he could as the droplet, it’s surface tension broke, spilled out over him.

He had known it was alcohol, he had known even that it was an old rye whiskey, angostura bitters, and demerara sugar; he’d seen Beth mix hundreds, if not thousands, of old fashions, but getting a face-full of the liquid was a different story. The alcohol rushed into his lungs to replace the woman’s spit he’d been trying to expel. The burning sensation wracked through him, his lungs, his eyes, his sinuses, even his skin seemed to burn with the strength of the alcohol, which overpowered everything else in the drink.

Worse still, as cold as he was from the cooling saliva, the rush of ice-cold cocktail flowing over him did little to help the situation. George found himself collapsed back down to the bartop, curled up, shivering, coughing, and trying not to drown in some strange woman’s spit or her drink.

Even before he fell to his side, his clothing had been soaked through. What he wore was about as good as could be expected for a shrunken person, but the cost of the extremely fine threads for custom shrunken-person clothing was exorbitant, and most, George included, made do with "normal" cloth and thread, cut to size. It fit, but loosely, and was incredibly coarse for him. Worse still, it held on to more liquid than some of the wealthier shrunken attire would and the whole of it was thoroughly dripping with spit and now, a wash of cocktail.

“Okay, Tiny, impress me…” She said, pulling her finger away from George’s coughing, collapsed form. She licked the remaining cocktail off of the tip of her finger. “What’s wrong with my drink?”

George tried to get his bearings. Most of his efforts were focused on halting the coughing that wracked his entire body, but he knew if he didn’t answer, quickly and satisfactorily, worse things than coughing would befall him. The drink was strong, stronger than most Beth would normally mix. It was then that George had an epiphany, a painful epiphany, but an epiphany nonetheless.

“It’s made with a substandard rye, mistress?” George offered.

He only guessed, but there was enough evidence to suggest Beth had overloaded the drink to compensate for using the cheap stuff. Beth was almost pathologic about saving the bar money, a bizarre compunction for a bartender where the average patron was chauffeured to and from the club in vehicles that cost more than the average house. The cheap stuff burned anyway, and with a heavier concentration, it would explain a great deal of the burning in George’s everything. The woman in gold’s smile broadened, showing her teeth from behind the golden lips.

“Tiny, you are just full of pleasant little surprises.” She said. “Well I think that leaves only two things to be done about. First, I’ll need a replacement drink, but it appears your bartender is occupied with something in back, so that will have to wait.”

George was only just beginning to breathe normally when he felt one of the least comfortable things he’d experienced since shrinking, a pair of fingers pinching around him. It was actually very rare for a shrunken person to be picked up, most normal sized people wanted little to do with their shrunken neighbors, and so it rarely came up. Those few that had to interact, service workers at placement centers, or specialty case workers, were supposed to go through training to encourage them to allow the shrunken person to climb onto an extended palm, or, at the absolute least, walk into an offered hand for a secure, relatively comfortable grip to wherever the shrunken person was being carried.

Those without training, or those who didn’t care, treated shrunken people more like objects, George felt the breath knocked out of him as the thumb and index finger gripped him securely and pulled him up into the air. By the time he got his bearings, he realized he was staring down at the woman in gold from high above her head. He tried to focus on her eyes, he tried to take in the beautiful jewelry she wore, or even the fact that from this vantage point he could see down her dress into her cleavage. But the only thing George could see, the only thing his eyes would focus on, was her mouth. And George’s mind couldn’t help but think of Harold.

Harold had been a newcomer to the club, he’d been recently shrunk but had been extremely wealthy. He had taken a job at the bar more as a distraction than anything else. As Beth had told George, Harold had actually been a member of the club at one point, although after his shrinking, the owner of the club refused to continue his membership. All of Harold’s money and connections hadn’t saved him one night, however, when a patron felt Harold had stepped out of his bounds, had forgotten his place, and had tried to assert himself as a member of the club. According to Beth, the patron had simply snatched Harold off of the bartop, ripped his custom made clothing from him, put him in her mouth, and swallowed him whole. There hadn’t even been anything to clean up.

“So that leaves the second thing to remedy my problem, Tiny.” The woman in gold said, dangling George above her head. “I need to get the taste of this subpar booze out of my mouth, and that’s where you come in.”

George screamed as he was lowered down, the woman in gold’s mouth opening wider and wider. Some animal part of his brain short circuited and instead of kicking and flailing, he tucked into a tight ball in some misguided attempt to shield himself from what was coming, it only made him easier to slip between the golden lips, passed the luminescent white teeth and into the wet darkness.

As her breath, now impossibly close and hot, washed over him, his fear-induced paralysis broke momentarily with her mouth closing around her fingers. He reached toward the closing light, but got only far as stretching himself out on her tongue as she deposited him on the relatively massive organ and sealed her lips. There was the slightest glimpse of light as her fingers pulled out from between her lips, but after that George found himself sealed in unrelenting heat, soaking spit, and crushing pressure of being sandwiched between the woman in gold’s tongue and the roof of her mouth.

For a brief moment, George found himself merely extremely uncomfortable. Small though he knew he was, he quickly learned there wasn’t much space inside the woman in gold’s mouth, and most of that was taken up by the tongue, and the issue of breathing hadn’t yet turned into the life or death matter it would become in mere moments. That brief period of relative comfort was dashed as the world became a vacuum chamber of crushing pressure as the woman in gold pinned him to the roof of her mouth and swallowed.

George had never been in a mouth, he had hoped to never be in a mouth, but even in his most fevered nightmares, he hadn’t expected it to be as unrelentingly violent as it was. His ears popped almost immediately, and his whole body was pressed between a tongue that was suddenly and violently no longer a soft, warm cushion, but a rough, hot, muscle squeezing him against the roof of her mouth.

He could still hear the cacophony of her mouth; what was inaudible outside of the confines of the woman in gold’s mouth became a din of squelches and, mortifying enough, the woman in gold’s heartbeat was like a pounding drum all around him. It was almost all drowned out by the sound of the woman in gold contentedly humming as she continued to apply more and more pressure to George’s body.

Just as George thought his whole body might burst from the pressure, everything changed. He felt like he dropped a whole story, light and air flooded over him in a cool wave. He took in a ragged, deep, and desperate breath, suddenly aware of how long it had been since he’d last drawn in any air. He coughed only once before the woman in gold’s finger were on him again. The digits seized him as roughly as before and dragged him from her mouth. On his way being pulled out, he hit his head on her teeth, leaving him seeing stars as she found himself back in the light of the club.

Almost immediately, the roller coaster of being swung around in the hands of someone who cared little for his comfort or safety began to make him nauseous. His journey, a swinging, dropping, rising trip, ended with the relative comfort of being placed in the palm of the woman in gold. Before he could stop his head from spinning, the fingers came at him again. This time those golden nails found their way to the fabric of his clothing and began to tear away the dripping soaked cloth from his body.

Even as he attempted to stop the giantess’s almond shaped nails from shredding his shirt and pants from him, he was offered a grim reminder of how powerless he was, his life literally in her hands. Her fingers didn’t even seem to notice his arms trying to fend her off as the last remnants of his clothing disappeared into shreds and somewhere over her palm.

“That’s better.” The woman in gold said. “Let’s try that again.”

George felt the world fall away again, and the woman in gold’s palm brought him up to her mouth. He had no chance to steel himself as she tilted her palm toward her, and George slid down, bouncing over the heel of her palm, and almost immediately sealed back into the wet confines of the woman in gold’s mouth.

This time she didn’t afford George the comfort of a brief moment to come to terms with his surroundings, instead her tongue immediately began to prod and probe him. The tongue found his every nook and crevice, battering his body and limbs as it pushed and shoved him around in an effort to explore him. He tried to shield his head as he was bludgeoned about the interior of the woman in gold’s mouth, but it did little good as even movement of the tongue was more than any part of him could resist.

There was no pause in his torment, but it did change in kind. The teeth that he had been battered against, spread open, and the tongue pushed him through, scraping and cutting him along the way, into the woman in gold’s cheek, where she proceeded to suck on him like a sweet treat.

Even worse was the woman in gold had seemed to strike up a conversation with someone. George couldn’t make out the details, his ears clogged with saliva and the roar of her voice echoed into an indecipherable cacophony, but her words and amused chuckles provided momentary breaths of air, and less mercifully, brief waves of light. George was never in any position to catch a glimpse of the world outside the tongue and teeth and gums and cheek and spit that assailed him, but each little ray of light let him see his prison in unmatched clarity, a clarity he realized very quickly he wished he lacked.

George was suddenly returned to resting on top of the tongue, where the woman in gold applied more suction to his already beaten body than she had previously. George was certain he’d pass out, if not from asphyxiation, than just from the increased pressure as he was compressed by her tongue, but mercifully, the pressure relented and he felt an intrusion into the mouth. The woman in gold’s fingers gripped him firmly, painfully firmly, and pulled him from her mouth, forcing him through her pursed lips as she dragged him free of her maw. Even with his vision spinning and only just returning, he could see her gold lipstick painting his limbs and body as he was slowly pulled through them back into the club.

It took George many moments to realize that the fingers had set him back down on the bartop, but the warm lighting over the bar, and the faint piano music that suffused the entire club gave it away. The world was again cold, still, stable, and flat to George, features he never thought he’d be thankful for, but having experienced the alternatives, was happy to be uncomfortable and able to breathe.

“Thank you so much, Bethany, darling.” The woman in gold said above him. “I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

Even as the voice of the woman in gold quieted into the distance, George could barely focus. Beaten, bruised all over, soaked through in saliva and alcohol, his body caught in a losing paradox between the adrenaline coursing through his veins and the exhaustion gripping his muscles. He noticed Beth cross her arms and lean over him on the bar, but admittedly, if it hadn’t been for her light blue dyed sidecut, or her garrish matching lipstick, he wouldn’t have recognized her through the haze of bodily fluids and exhaustion. Beth only ever relaxed like that when the club had closed, so George allowed himself to stay where he lay, trying to collect himself to crawl back to the relative safety of his post.

“Well, Georgie-boy, I gotta' say, I envy you. Ms. Tedese is one of the most fuckin' stunning women I’ve ever seen in here and you just got more intimate with her than most.” Beth started. “And I think she really likes you, Georgie. You should’ve seen what she did to three of your former coworkers.”

George coughed up some of the woman in gold’s spit in response.

“She asked for you, specifically, to attend her tomorrow night in her private booth.” Beth said, she brandished a toothpick with a pair of olives skewered on it, she pulled one off with her teeth. “She asked for a dry martini and for you to be holding the garnish.”

George groaned.

“Good news, Georgie-boy.” Beth said, smiling down at him and chewing the olive. “You just got a promotion. Best of luck.”