Hidden away in one of the empty rooms on the third floor of the academy, a secret ceremony was taking place. Thousands of men and women were being led down a dark alleyway with no end in sight. Leading the charge of this group of people was Korekiyo Shinguji, the Ultimate Anthropologist. As an Ultimate, everyone in the group respected him and his knowledge of tales. And tonight was one of the biggest tales of all, as he would lead these people to a place where he could speak to the afterlife.
The walk to this ritual ground was a daunting one. The whole time everything was pitch black, and the ground they tread on was damp, as if walking through a swamp. People were constantly smacking their heads on huge rocks they couldn’t even see, and tripping over each other causing them to fall to the ground, coating their entire bodies in the wet substance. Even though the journey was miserable, they still followed their leader whom they all trusted. But under the mask, Korekiyo had a wicked grin.
Three days ago, another secret ceremony was being held in the room of the Ultimate Maid, Kirumi Tojo. But instead of a ceremony, it was a…unique discussion.
“So you want me to grab one of Angie’s shoes, get Miu to make a shrinking device, and then shrink you and a bunch of others to make a haunted house for you to host a seance?” Kirumi questioned in a monotone voice.
“Yes, and also I will need you to provide the ambiance as well.” Kiyo responded, sipping some tea as they made arrangements.
“It is a strange request, but as the Ultimate Maid, I shall do my best to uphold it.”
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Back in the present, Kirumi now sits in the almost empty room. She had brought a small light and a book to keep herself occupied, as the only thing else in the room was one of Angie’s shoes sitting in the middle of the room. She had already fulfilled most of her request, shrinking a bunch of people down to the size of dust mites and depositing them in the shoe with Kiyo. All that was left was to provide some frights to the people trapped inside. She closed the book and stood up, setting her book down on the chair. Very slowly, she took a step right beside the discarded shoe, and then another. For the people trapped inside, the steps of Kirumi’s boots slapping against the ground made it sound like constant thunderstorms for the frightened folks. The tremors of her steps caused even more to fall down against the damp surface of Angie’s insole, and others to get caught against the huge mounds of lint stuck in the shoe.
For the maid, it was time to step up the scares to a new level. She slowly approached the mouth of the shoe and bent down, lowering her head as close as she could to the entrance. Part of her felt a little humiliated doing this, but those stuck inside had it a whole lot worse. Kirumi gulped, forming a huge glob of saliva in her mouth. With her spit primed, she pursed her lips a bit, letting that sticky liquid ooze from her mouth, dumping right inside the cage that is now a problem for the residents of that shoe.
Behind the crowd of people, they could hear something rapidly approaching them. But in this darkness, it was impossible to tell what it was until it was too late. A vast ocean of saliva flooded down the sole of the shoe, swallowing people as it sank deeper down inside. The mite sized people could only scream in terror as they were washed away into the unknown. Those more athletic tried to swim away, but the thickness of the liquid was too strong for their puny bodies to handle. The strong acidic feel to the gooey drool mixed with the salty sweat from Angie’s insole caused their eyes to burn from the intensity of the liquids. Mixed with the cuts formed on their body from the sudden rush of the heavy water, those unfortunate enough to get caught felt their bodies dissolve, melting them down into a pool of liquid to become a part of the more superior body of water that was Kirumi’s saliva before they could even drown. Kiyo was taken aback, not predicting this to be a part of his plan at all. And now he, too, was at risk of meeting the same gloomy fate. He quickly gave up on his plans now as most of the people who came to meet ghosts were quickly turning into them instead. But at his size, there wasn’t anywhere for him to escape, so he quickly hightailed it down the shoe, doing his best to try and reach the toe section, waiting things out until the maid could free him.
Up above in the normal world, Kirumi smirked, feeling as if she did a good job really sending shivers down their spines, completely unaware of the fact that she had slaughtered hundreds with a single action. But then, disaster struck for her too as something she didn’t account for happened.
The door to the empty room swung open, revealing Angie wearing only one shoe. There was no reason for anyone to come into these empty rooms unless they were looking for something. And as it turned out, she was looking for something rather apparent to her.
“Oh Kirumi, you found my shoe for me! May Atua bless your soul.” Angie praised the maid, completely oblivious to what was truly going on in this room. The maid tried to speak up, but she was too late as the energetic artist girl sprang into action, leaping across the room and raced to her shoe, quickly sliding her right bare foot into it.
Korekiyo panicked, as well as the few survivors that managed to avoid the tsunami of drool, as they all heard the deafening voice ring out high in the sky above them. The world-shattering stomps caused the microscopic people to trip over themselves, barely making any progress before the true owner of the shoe finally arrived home. As the titanic foot shifted forward, it quickly squashed those that were caught in its path, turning those poor souls into little red dots on the bottom of her toes. Their limbs were all mangled up now, and their guts all mushed together and formed an incohesive glob that didn’t even look remotely human now. The only saving grace from this was that it was too dark to see the massacre taking place below her foot. Kiyo kept racing, hoping to escape this deadly force and hide out in the safety of the end gap in the shoe. But at his size, all hope was lost as he wasn’t even halfway across the sole. Just like that, Angie’s foot quickly caught up to him, causing the leader of the group to wind up underneath the ball of Angie’s foot. He let out a horrified shriek as he felt his bones crumble to dust under the sheer weight of the foot. His guts and organs compressed into one another, mixing itself in with the skin on his outer body. He could feel his body compact itself into one of the canyon sized wrinkles, merging to become one with the bottom of her foot. The wrinkle was stronger than his whole body, cutting off his limbs from a simple twitch, leaving him to bleed all over the place. For Kiyo, it felt like an eternity in hell with what he was experiencing. But yet, this all happened in less than a second as the anthropologist soon joined the world of the undead he loved so much.
“Hmm…it’s kind of wet. Oh well!” Angie stated, wiggling her foot around to feel the inside of her shoe. Most of that wet, sticky feeling came from Kirumi’s drool, but there was a hint of something mushier, as now the artist had thousands of crumpled up bodies stuck to her sole. But she would be none the wiser as she quickly turned around and skipped out of the room, leaving Kirumi in complete shock as to what just happened. But they never agreed to letting them out in the first place, so as far as she could tell, her request was complete.
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Shuichi just stared down at the pages with a blank expression on his face as he finished reading the chapter. His fingers were already pinched between the sheets to flip to the next page, but his mind came to a halt trying to process what he just saw. After a long pause of silence, he finally lifted his head up to turn to Kaede, who had already been looking over at him to try and gauge his reaction.
“What…was that?” Shuichi finally spoke up, still baffled at that story. “Why was Kirumi, Angie, and Kiyo all in this? And then this whole…shrinking thing. It makes no sense.” His detective brain was hard at work trying to piece things together. One thing was for sure, that this was a work of fiction as he had seen Kiyo alive and well earlier in the lunchroom for their morning breakfast.
All Kaede could do was smile. She reeled her arm back, and smacked Shuichi in his back, trying to bring him back to reality. The spaced out boy let out a gasp from the force, which led to a friendly giggle from the pianist. “Well…it was a pretty creepy story. But that’s what we came in here to look for anyways, something creepy for the Halloween spirit!” Kaede cheered, doing her best to stay optimistic after reading something so gruesome. “But I don’t think dressing as Angie’s shoe lint would make for a great costume so…let’s keep reading! Maybe the next story will be better.”
Shuichi sat back up after that playful smack, staring back into Kaede’s pleasant smile. He felt like with that kind of energy around him, he could do anything. “Alright, let’s do it.” He accepted, finally turning to the next page. His heart was pounding now, not really sure what to expect after a strange and twisted tale like that. But one look at the title showed that things weren’t going to get better anytime soon.