A beautiful summer was at its peak. Many people’s favorite season, for several different reasons. Whether it was a trip to the beach, the prospect of a holiday, the alluring sight of attractive girls wearing shorts and crop tops, or even just a pint of ice cream in the freezer, everyone had something to look forward to in these sweltering months.

Everyone except those unfortunate souls who had caught the shrinking disease sparking from some toxins that seemed to randomly develop in common foods. These people immediately shrank to the size of specks, barely visible to ordinary people.

Bill and Therese could almost consider themselves lucky - they were among the ones who were found and rescued, while many others weren’t so fortunate - they ended up crushed underfoot, eaten by predators, or sometimes even found by normal-sized people and toyed with.

Obviously, calling any speck-sized person lucky would’ve sounded quite ironic. The married couple had spent the last month trapped inside a jar inside the house of Maria, Therese’s sister.

Too small to meaningfully interact with the outside world, most of their entertainment consisted of talking to each other, watching the giants' lives outside, and sometimes watching TV with Maria or April, their daughter who had luckily avoided shrinking.

All that, plus one more occupation, something that Bill was trying to get busy with as he was slumped over his wife, panting heavily as he penetrated her with all the vigor he could muster.

The woman stopped him as a shadow descended over them - their gigantic daughter was observing them from outside the jar, bending down in front of them with the widest grin on her face. “Stop,” the woman said. “The girl’s watching us!”

Bill protested, trying to take hold of his wife’s shoulders. “C’mon babe,” he said, “we’re too small for her to even see what we’re doing.”

They both turned to the girl as they heard another pair of footsteps inching closer.

“What are you watching?” a female voice asked. Another towering woman appeared, a fit brunette carrying a heavy scent of cologne: she was Maria, Therese’s younger sister, and April’s aunt.

The girl giggled and pointed at her tiny parents. “They’re fucking again,” the girl said, proving her father wrong.

“Again?” said Maria. “They’re just like rabbits, I swear.”

April’s breath had fogged the glass jar, covering the view of what was inside, so Maria had to observe them from the top, her face appearing above like a huge cloud filling up the sky. “It’s not like there’s anything else they can do in there,” the woman reasoned. “One of these days, you will end up with an itty-bitty baby brother.”

April appeared concerned. “Do you think that’s possible at their size?”

Maria shrugged. “I don’t know, but I would hope not. I would feel bad for the poor child, having to live like that.”

“Right,” agreed April. “Let’s stop them before they can finish.” The girl didn’t waste time picking up and flipping the jar, letting the minuscule couple roll through its side until they fell right in the middle of their gigantic daughter’s hand.

Maria laughed. “Come on, that’s just cruel. Let the poor buggers have some fun once in a while.”

“It’s not cruel. I’m only doing this because I don’t want that baby gnat brother.”

“That’s not for you to decide,” Maria rebutted. “They’re their own persons, and you can’t play god with them.”

April smirked upon hearing her niece’s words. “Who says I can’t? A god is pretty much what I am to them. See?”

To prove her point, April lightly breathed onto her shrunken parents, scattering the insignificant couple to different sides of her palm, which she curled to make sure they wouldn’t fall down.

A different person might’ve scolded April, telling her that she should’ve respected her parents. Maria, however, just chuckled, enjoying watching the mischievous teenager toying with the shrunken couple.

The older woman stretched her arms and looked at the wall clock on the far side of the room. "Well, Miss God, I have the day off today," she announced. "Is there anything you would like to do together?"

April excitedly bounced, going through the various fun possibilities in her mind. “We could go to the beach. Or... we could go shopping! I’d really like to get some new pairs of shoes and a new swimsuit.”

The woman nodded. “Let’s both get ready and go to the shopping mall, then.”

The state had sent April her first monthly check as reparation for her parents' condition, so she had a good chunk of money to spend. She was supposed to be excited about the trip, but instead, a look of discontent seemed to suddenly overshadow her face.

Maria noticed the girl’s pout. “What’s wrong?” she asked her niece. “Changed your mind?”

“No,” the girl said, looking at the tiny persons in her hand. “It’s just... me and mom used to go shopping together all the time, and she always used to help me pick out stuff.”

“Oh,” Maria said, a serious expression on her face. “Why don’t you bring her along, then? I’m sure she would like to help, even at that size.”

“Really?” said April, as her face lightened up again.

“Yeah,” Maria nodded. “You can take your mom and dad with you both.”

“Oh no,” the girl said. “Dad hates going shopping. Let’s just leave him home and let mom tag along.”

Maria nodded. “Let’s go get ready then,” she concluded as she affectionately rubbed her niece’s head.

*

Once they got to the mall, the duo divided. April, holding her mother in her own jar, went to the stores most fashionable among young people, while Maria went to an electronic appliances shop to look for a new hairdryer.

The teen cheerfully strolled among the aisles of one of her favorite stores, carrying quite a few items to the fitting room, where she unpacked them all, ready to try them on in front of the mirror.

She hung all the clothes she had picked while she lined the various shoes on the floor. Finally, she undressed, removing her sneakers, socks, shorts, and shirt, and stood in her underwear, getting ready to start her own personal fashion parade.

Of course, her personal helper had to be present as well. She let Therese come out of the jar and roll out on top of the fitting room stool, where she came out in the middle of her sweaty shirt. The fabric was rife with the teen girl’s sweat, and at Maria’s size, it felt like walking into a marsh, where the cotton fibers were intertwined and soaked. The sweat was fairly fresh, so it didn’t smell that bad, but it still ended up soaked the woman’s whole body, making her gag at her humiliating and disgusting predicament.

"So, Mom, what do you think?" the gigantic daughter asked as she twirled around, showing the woman the green bikini she was trying on. Though its shape was rather simple, its size was rather skimpy, leaving little of the girl's body to the imagination. "Right," the girl said as she addressed her mom, barely noticeable as a speck in the middle of her shirt's print. "You didn't let me buy swimsuits like this one back when you were big," she said as she admired her own thong-covered butt in the mirror.

“I hope you don’t mind if I’m getting this now,” she said. “Because it makes my ass look so good.”

Even though the clothes April chose to wear were very low on her current list of problems, the woman still felt the need to tell off her daughter and stop her from buying the skimpy thong - feeling a definite frustration at her lack of ability to do so.

Her frustration was amplified by the sight of April becoming even taller and more imposing: the girl let her bare feet step onto the wedge platform sandals she had picked out at the store, gaining a good three inches in the process.

"Hmm, nice!" the girl said, getting a very positive feel from the new shoes she had tried on. "I just love how tall they make me look," the teen said as she admired herself in the mirror. "Right sorry, Mom that might have been a bit insensitive," she said as she lifted her right foot in the air for Therese to be able to see.

Therese found the shoes were beautiful indeed, a pair she would have loved to wear had she had the chance. The woman sighed, feeling nostalgic for the many little things now missing in her life, like getting new shoes, going out for a bicycle ride, smelling the flowers... instead of her daughter’s sweaty clothes.

April interrupted Therese's ruminating with a loud boom. The girl had slammed her sandal-clad foot over the stool, right in front of her mother, onto which she looked down with a grin.

“Just look at how tall the platform is,” the teen girl said. “It must look HUGE to you.”

April was a smart girl who excelled at maths, so measuring the size in her head was an easy exercise for her. "To you, it must be more than 400 feet tall," the girl calculated.

She looked at how puny the woman looked next to the tip of her foot, how out of reach even her toes looked to the insignificant speck, which led her to a fun idea.

Therese looked up at her face with resentment, feeling teased by her daughter. “Why don’t you try and climb it?” the girl had said.

She was grinning as she stared at the woman, who appeared to be unreactive. "Come on, Mom, you're no fun," she said. "Just give it a try, and if you manage to climb on top, I'll let you and Dad watch TV with me later. The new Weirder Things episodes just came out."

Maria was bribed by those words. She wasn’t even aware the new Weirder Things had come out, having been cut off from the outside world. Looking at the steep wall in front of her, she knew the climb would have been difficult, but doable. Prior to the shrinking incident, she used to be in good physical shape, and she had retained some of that form. In fact, she welcomed the idea of being able to exercise. Was it humiliating having to climb her daughter’s shoe? Sure, but as she was currently sitting in a puddle of the girl’s sweat, it could hardly get any worse.

So she started climbing on the piece of footwear, finding footholds in the intricate pattern of the sandal, advancing step by step toward her goal.

April followed her movements with enthrallment, satisfied that she had managed to convince her mother to climb on her shoe. While she was initially entertained by the show her mom provided, though, the girl quickly got bored with the woman’s excruciatingly slow pace, and slipped her foot out of the sandal so that she could try on more clothes.

The teen removed her bikini so that she could try another, throwing it on the pile of clothes on the stool, the air displacement almost knocking Therese off as she still attempted her climb. The girl then put on some shorts and a tank top, noticing how the brand-new clothes enhanced her nice figure.

Happy with the clothes she had selected, she turned to her mother to check the woman's progress on the sandal. Therese, who had covered three-quarters of the way with an enormous effort, unfortunately, lost her grip when the girl, upon turning around, inadvertently stubbed her toe on the stool leg, not thinking much of the impact such an insignificant hit had over the surface of the piece of furniture.

What to April could barely register as a movement, to Therese was a catastrophic earthquake that violently shook the sandal she was on, making her fall and tumble down into an abyss. Luckily, the impact was soft: she landed right on the girl’s pile of clothes, exactly in the middle of the scandalous bikini bottom April had tried on before.

The teen’s brown eyes inspected the sandal, unable to find any trace of her mother; then she went to look at the pile of clothes on the stool.

"So you gave up!" the girl said upon seeing the speck of a woman in the middle of the green fabric. "Sorry Mom but no tv then for you today," the girl announced.

She took on a perplexed expression. “What are you doing in my bikini, anyway?” she asked, her hand scratching her chin. “Are you trying to tell me I can’t buy it?” she asked, her face turning annoyed.

She picked up the bikini bottom and lifted it off the stool so that her mother tumbled off it and fell back onto the sweaty shirt.

“I told you I was going to get it anyway, I don’t care what you say,” the girl announced, showing her tongue to her mother in defiance.

She amassed the bikini, along with the shorts, top, and wedge sandals, in a pile: she was going to buy everything. There was just one final item she had to try on: a nicely decorated pair of flats with a toe strap that crossed the whole foot, intertwining with multiple straps that adorned her ankles.

"Oooh!" the teen squealed as she slipped into the sandals. "They're so comfy, Mom!" she said as she felt the nice touch of the leathery insole against her foot.

April's shadow covered Therese as the girl bent down over her. "You've got to feel it, Mom," the girl said as she imposed her fingertip over the woman, letting her stick to it like an iron marble to a magnet; then the teen lowered the woman to her foot, letting her fall in the space between her first two toes.

“Isn’t it nice?” the girl giggled as the woman was more impressed - and terrified - by the monolithic toes towering around her and threatening to obliterate her at the first wrong movement. Besides, her weight did not allow her to make a dent on the shoe surface, making her unable to appreciate the amazing softness that her daughter was praising so much.

At that moment, a loud knock on the door came up, followed by a rather annoyed voice. “Are you done? You can’t hog the fitting room for yourself all day,” complained an angry customer.

April sighed. She didn’t appreciate being scolded, but it was true that she had spent a lot of time in that fitting room with her mother.

"Comiing," she sang as she started folding and gathering the clothes she was about to buy. Holding the clothes in her arms, she grabbed the jar where she kept her mom so that she could return the woman to it. Her hands, however, already carrying the wedge sandals and the pile of clothes, were over-encumbered, and as a result, she had to pick the jar between her fourth and fifth fingers. The precarious adjustment did not last for long and the jar soon fell on the floor, shattering to pieces.

“Oh no,” cried the worried teen. “What am I going to do now?”

She looked at her mom standing by her toes. She had no other place to carry her safely other than the jar. How was she going to carry her outside of the mall and during the drive home?

Looking down at her foot, her question was already answered as she remembered a recent episode where her aunt inadvertently took Therese inside her shoes as she went for a run. They always marveled at how the woman survived the ordeal, but if that happened once, it could have happened twice, didn’t it?

April slowly imposed her big toe over the speck-sized woman until she was plastered to the underside of the digit. She wiggled the toe a few times, making sure Therese was tightly stuck and wouldn’t fall off, then she inserted her foot into her sock and then into her sneaker shoe.

As Therese was pushed into the rather soft, but grimy embrace between toe and sock, gagging at the foul smell emanating from the fabric, April tied her shoe, getting ready to leave the fitting room and pay for her clothes. She confidently walked to the register, satisfied with the way she had handled the situation. She was getting really good at dealing with tiny people, she told herself.