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You shudder, feeling the cold of the tile floor traveling into your feet and up through your body as the equally trembling ground vibrates you to the marrow.  Clenching your fists together to quell the tremors, with courage you tilt your head up, past the tabletop and counters towering far over your head like the concrete canyons of a major metropolis, and watch the doorway.  Light beams softly from the space beyond, creeping into the silent hall, and suddenly you’re no longer alone.

            “Oh, there you are, little bro,” Carly croons lovingly as she pads into the room, stepping lithely on the balls of her naked feet.  Her thighs slide together as she advances on tiptoes, one leg in front of the other, across the floor.  Her hair illuminates in the soft glow behind her, the light rounding the firm curve of her arms and shoulders.  Those lips, curled to one side in curious contemplation, broaden as she nears you, her glistening pearly whites on display.

            “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” your colossal sister intones, stroking a thumb down the side of her cheek with a sigh.  She comes to a stop at last mere inches from where you’ve been rooted to the ground.  For a moment your eyes inescapably are pulled down to the burly toes, bouncing joyously against the tile, but your crane your neck back up to Carly’s beaming countenance with every ounce of willpower you have left.

            You can’t allow her to win.  It’s not just your body you’re fighting for now.

            “You already know what I want, don’t you?” she giggles.  Her right foot arches slightly off the ground, pivoting on her heel.  Gulping, out of the corner of your eye you catch the creamy underside of her sole, the wrinkles rippling in anticipation as she points her toes at the level of your head.

            “I can guess,” you mumble, too quietly to be heard, though somehow the sound reaches her ears all the same.

            “Come on.  Do you really have to guess?” she teases.  Her toes slap back down to the floor, sending another rumble through the ground and up into your body, but quickly rear back up again.  Pointedly she strokes the ball of her foot along the surface of the tile in winding circles as though writing something in loopy letters.  “Look at my foot.”

            “I… I, uh…” you mutter.  You have to be strong.  Your keep your eyes forced up to your magnificent little sister’s smirking face, painful as it is.  Giving in now means being dragged that much closer to defeat.  You open your mouth, coughing up the required syllable.  “No.”

            “Little bro,” Carly whispers imperiously, bewitching you as she always does.  Her heel rises from the ground and pounds back into the floor with an impatience that rattles your bones.  “Look.  At.  My.  Foot.”

            As though the muscles under your skin are no longer your own, you snap your gaze back down to the floor in time to watch your sister’s massive foot lifting off the ground again, rising above you.  Her toenails, pink and clean, glimmer as the light travels between the mighty pillars of her legs.  The sole arches, curving into a valley you could almost get lost in before scrunching again and revealing the deep fleshy canyons of her wrinkles.  Carly’s toes part, stretching as far as they can to allow air into the warm crevices as the entire appendage descends on your meek form below.

            “Don’t run,” she murmurs as the familiar shadow of her foot expands around you.

            “I…” you utter, your throat having gone dry, and spit out the only word you can manage.  “Yes.”

            “Good boy.”

            Your body refuses to budge as your sister’s mammoth sole reaches you with a powerful thud, blotting out all else you can see.  The pillowy flesh rams softly into your body, but you brace, standing your ground as Carly rests the underside of her athletic foot into your face.  With your chest pressed to her tender skin, you think you can feel her pulse pounding calmly beneath the peachy ceiling, and your heart obediently lowers to match her pace.  Even the automatic functions of your brain don’t have to question who’s in charge here.

            Carly’s sole is a roadmap of rippling flesh, constantly shifting in hue from a deep blushing pink to a cool pale as she gently flexes her titanic foot against you in an almost overwhelming embrace.  The valley of each wrinkle for an instant becomes a river in the terrain of her expansive sole as you imagine water flowing through, down the landscape of your sister’s foot and into some unseen ocean beyond. 

            “Touch me, little bro,” Carly insists firmly from above, her voice sweeping in under the noise-dampening obstacle of her foot as it descends just a little lower over you, forcing you to drop to your knees.

            The instruction was hardly necessary.  Right now her foot is everything you can see, feel, or smell - your every sense locked to it.  You were probably seconds away from prostrating yourself, just because of where you are.

            Reaching out, you flatten your palms against the vast undulating plain of your sister’s gorgeous foot, and curl your fingers into the nearest wrinkle as it furrows into Carly’s sole.  Kneading as hard as your thin digits will allow, you begin to work the skin, digging your nails against the slight ridges of the rubbery instep.  Though you’re hardly a speck against the monument of her foot, like a practiced sculptor, your tiny hands glide over your sister’s warming sole with speed and plenty of force, as though you could do it in your sleep, and probably have before.  You know how she likes it, and it feels more than natural to do it.  You’re hardly aware now of your own desire to stop and flee from underneath here as you rub even more fiercely than before.

            Carly responds in kind to your contact by flexing her foot even more feverishly, massaging it against your puny body.  She, too, knows just how to manipulate your every delicate muscle from head to toe with just a few slight vibrations and caresses with her foot.  You can’t deny it feels good, no matter how much you want to.

            “Don’t be so shy,” your sister says with a flighty chuckle.  “Let me feel you.”

            If she insists.

            With nothing left to lose, you bury your face into the doughy center of her sole.  Her skin, often salty, gleaming with fresh sweat and speckled with squishy toejam, is clean now.  Pleasantly sweet, even.  Past the downy scent of carpet and grassy outdoor flavor you can make out the fading aroma of her favorite fruity soap intermingled with lotion, globbed thickly over her skin to maintain its silky texture.  Every flex of her foot releases a new burst of wafting perfumes and strawberries, inflating balmily inside your skull.

            By now Carly’s foot has lowered enough that it’s pancaked you onto your back.  You’re forced to completely submit beneath the weight of it, but it’s a familiar position for you, and your heart still doesn’t waver from keeping pace with your giant sister’s. You trust that she’ll yield just enough to let you keep breathing.  One of many gifts.  Why the hell would you have wanted to run again?  The thought is a half-remembered echo in the back of your brain, like something from a childhood dream, distant and incomprehensible.

            And without even being questioned, as if the order was already implanted in your mind beyond the need of physical encouragement, you pucker your lips together and plant them against the pliable wall of luscious skin, experiencing the fruity body odors in tenfold strength.  Like it was waiting for this, a wrinkle in your sister’s sole clenches together and meets your lips almost exactly, plush and pleasing as you lay a kiss on her supple flesh.

            Though the gesture was slight and probably lost amidst the all-consuming mass of her foot, Carly giggles lovingly, her joy ringing in your ears.  She felt it.

            “My foot loves you too, little bro,” she confirms sweetly.  “Now how about you give the other one a kiss?”

            “Jack,” Dr. Felton whispers in that soothing tone of hers, lightly snapping her fingers to regain your attention.  “Jack, we’re going to exit the visualization now.  Start to imagine your environment fading back into the familiar.  Become aware of what you can see with your own two eyes again.”

            Your eyes snap open rigidly as you let your limbs flop down on the bright blue pillow laid atop the psychologist’s oaken desk.  Emerging from your doctor’s guided mental tours through the most damaged parts of your psyche always takes a few minutes to accomplish.  In the years past, you would’ve only scoffed at such goofy imagination games, but your mind’s been abused for long enough that it hardly takes any effort now for your consciousness to descend fully into these déjà vu journeys.  The bespectacled woman herself sits like a serene sentinel in her leather chair just past the surface, her manicured hands folded neatly near the edge of the cushion.  Her office, lined with several framed degrees and painted imagery of hummingbirds, melts back into your vision.

            There’s no Carly, certainly not one that can tower over you any longer like a self-appointed deity, nor is there a humongous bare foot bearing down on you and lovingly squashing your body beneath its fleshy padding.  Despite this remembrance of reality, though, as you squint up at the eggshell-painted ceiling of the psychologist’s office high above, your eyes struggle to believe you’re not still admiring the wrinkled, peachy canvas of your little sister’s truck-sized sole.  You can still feel the mild fruity flavor of her skin on your lips from that dreamed kiss.

            It’s probably safe to say you failed.  Again.

            “I’m sensing you had some trouble staying focused that time, Jack,” Dr. Felton suggests calmly.  “Would I be right about that?”

            “Yes,” you say begrudgingly, unable to look her in the eye out of embarrassment.

            As the present moment overtakes you again, you’re flooded with self-loathing and disgust to have flunked what now seems like it should be such an easy task.  It’s pretty simple, really.  The doctor helps you to integrate yourself into a controlled fantasy where you’re found by your sister, sets up a scenario where you can refuse to bow to Carly’s whims, and then you simply have to follow through.  In theory, it sounds like it should take no more than a few angry rebuttals and a stomp of your foot.  In practice, you nearly always fall back into the mindset of being your sister’s shrunken slave, no matter how much control you should have over your own dreamscape.  Subconscious expectation of your place in life has been bent far too much to do anything else but give yourself back to Carly.

            “Don’t get down on yourself,” the doctor insists, knowing how hard you can be on these failures.  “We’re still just trying to explore here and find ways to work our way back.  If we were to rip you away from what your mind is used to, like a band-aid, it wouldn’t stick.  What you’re attempting now is a long-term process that will eventually allow you some rest from everything you’re going through.  Do you understand?”

            “Yes,” you say, wanting desperately to believe it.  She’s rephrased those lines to you thousands of ways over the months as you’ve tried again and again to break free of Carly’s mental grasp.  You know Dr. Felton believes it herself, which is the only glimmer of hope you have that you can reach that point someday too.  As of now, though, success feels awfully distant.  You slump deeper into the pillow, collapsing your arms over your chest and finally daring to look the doctor in the eyes.

            “I mean it,” the woman says, smiling good-naturedly.  A glint of sunlight catches the rim of her glasses as she adjusts them behind her ear.  She leans forward a few more inches over your pillow, careful not to make any sudden moves.  You’re not exactly skittish after spending so many years at this size, but it’s clear she herself is still not entirely used to it even after a year of seeing you, and prefers to err on the cautious side.  It’s something you’ve appreciated deeply even though it’s not required, and was one of the major factors in the making the decision when your parents and Sophie were helping shop around for mental health aid.

            While the brunette medical professional still seems unsure at times of how to act physically around a patient smaller than her thumb, she at least adjusted very quickly to speaking to you in a normal tone as though you aren’t made of glass.  That’s far more important to you, because it’s something that only she and Sophie have truly mastered so far.

            “I know,” you say.  “I’m… trying.”

            “Of course you are,” she says.  “Maybe we just need to take a break from that for now.  We’ll try again later on if you’re feeling up to it.”

            “Okay,” you agree.  “So what now?”

            “I’m sure you saw the news about the chemical companies, considering it was on every headline and news bulletin,” the psychologist says.  “How did you feel when you saw it?”

            “Good,” you say, nodding your head emphatically.  “G-Glad.”  There isn’t quite an adequate word to summon up your relief at this notion, so this is all you can do for now.

            “I see,” she says happily.  “I was glad too.  Maybe this will help bring some closure to all of this someday.”

            “I hope,” you say.  Certainly it’s a tremendous source of calm to know the world is safe from the chemicals that were used to render you down to a height below a quarter of a foot.  Oddly enough, you suppose everyone was already relatively safe from them, as the leaked formula had quickly spread across the nation with only unsuccessful results, as shown in a variety of YouTube clips where people attempted to shrink their cats, their parents, or even unsuspecting passerby.  Apparently the mixture didn’t have the same effect on a humankind-wide scale.  Still, you suppose you’ll be able to sleep just a little better tonight knowing the matter is definitively closed.

            “I also thought I’d ask if you wanted to talk about your mother again,” Dr. Felton poses gingerly.  “I know you were going to try to have a conversation with her last week.  Did that end up happening?”

            “Yeah… I mean, sort of,” you partially lie.  “She’s… well, it’s still hard to talk to her.  It’s kind of a… well, it’s complicated.”

            “Why don’t you just start at the beginning, then?”

            “Sure.  Two days ago, I was on the coffee table.  Sophie put me there but got a text from her sister and had to go pick her up from somewhere.  So Mom came in to read, and was going to sit at one of the chairs further away, but I asked her to come sit at the couch in front of the table instead,” you explain.

            “Good.  And?”

            “I, uh… I asked her if she could take a minute from reading to talk.  And she said of course and put the book down, and it… looked like she wanted to put a hand down and pick me up, but then didn’t,” you continue, gulping uncomfortably.  “She’s still… well, you know.”

            “She’s still having a hard time getting past that threshold,” Dr. Felton says knowingly.  “It’ll come in time.  Don’t worry.  So what did you say?”

            “I said I wanted to talk about how she was… handling things,” you say.  “And I just wanted to know if she was ready to hear… any of it.  And she said yes, but I could tell she was already… well, her eyes were turning pink and getting wet.”

            “All right.  Go on.”

            “I didn’t tell her any of the big things.  Any of the things that would… really set her off.  I didn’t go into details, either,” you say, wringing your hands together.  “But I told her about… the day I was declared dead, and Carly celebrated by, um…”

            “Yes?”

            “Sticking me in a cupcake and eating me out of it,” you report blankly.

            “Right,” Dr. Felton says with a firm nod, having heard this particular tale before in far more excruciatingly moist detail.  By this point, nothing you could say to the woman about your time in Carly’s hands could shock her.

            Well, almost nothing.

            “I know Mom doesn’t really need to hear a lot of that stuff, but I just… I just need to be able to put back together that time somehow.  You know, piece it together.  And I need someone who was there, even if they didn’t know I was.  Dad’s in DC, and Sophie can only do so much,” you say guiltily.  Speaking to your mother about your years in secret captivity still hasn’t gotten much easier, even with Dr. Felton’s coaching, which you admittedly can understand.  After all, your parents had assumed you were dead and Carly wasn’t a psychotic monster, both of which were proven incorrect in one fell swoop.  It probably takes some adjustment.  “That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

            “You want to be able to level with your family,” the psychologist says softly.  “Even if you can feel safe with them now, if they can’t begin to understand what you went through, there will always be that distance.  It’s perfectly natural to need to connect in that way, even if it hurts one or both of you.  But remember, Jack, you’re not there to protect your parents.  They’re there to protect you.  And from the talk I had with your mom and dad, I know they’d move heaven and earth to make things right for you again.  So don’t try to soften things on their account.  Okay?”

            “Okay,” you say with relief, though a part of you still stings with the complex stew of sickened emotions swirling around your synapses.  “I guess I… just need to ask for a hand sometimes.”

            “It’s only human,” Dr. Felton adds with another encouraging smile.

 

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