Dave's stomach continued to rumble as he ducked under a rusted out chain-link fence into the narrow strip of cement that lead to his tiny haven. The old cement path lead to a storm drain, not that he had ever gone too close to the large rusted grate, terrified that he would trip and fall to his doom and die buried in sewage. A quarter of the way down though, a few feet past the aluminum gutter, was the space that he had made into his home.

Gripping the rough surface of the red brick in front of him, he clambered up until he reached the slightly fluttering patch of tarp that protected his little lair from the elements and god only knew what else. He slid into the missing brick on his belly until he came to the hollowed out section inside the wall that he had discovered on his first day of being shrunk. Dave had long wondered about its original use, being far too neat and clean for some sort of animal warren. Yanking open a bag he had made out of his former, now gigantic shirt, he pulled out his emergency stash of stale crumbs, which he still hadn't been lucky enough to replenish over the past several days.

Hunkering down, he carefully gnawed at one of his few remaining crumbs and looked around his dark home before deciding for the umpteenth time that it must have been a stash for drugs or something equally illegal. The first time he had realized that, after several days of being there, Dave had almost bolted from the safe haven, terrified it was about to be invaded by some gigantic hand that would be shocked to find him instead of a bag of heroin or coke. It was too clean though. Too empty. Whoever had made use of it was long gone, or at least that's what he told himself.

A shiver went down his spine as he remembered the Immune teenage girl that had almost spotted him. Some enormous private school student who kept a former teacher in her backpack like the grown woman wasn't another person. The very thought of being imprisoned like that made his heart skip a beat, along with the reminder of how terrifyingly easy it would have been for that girl to snatch him up. If her enslaved teacher had screamed in fright when she saw him, if he had sneezed, if she had simply noticed him when she looked down to admire her shoes. So many things left to random chance could have made him her plaything, because there was almost no escaping people who could cover the ground you did in a sprint with a single step.

Dave had known that long before he had been diagnosed.

Rumors had circulated the whole time he was in college of people suddenly disappearing with no explanation, but tons of people vanished all the time and he told himself they'd turn up eventually. Then, sometime after he had gotten his first job in New York City, he had heard that all those disappearances were from people shrinking. Rumors ran rampant of people's roommates suddenly becoming an inch tall, or people waking up and finding themselves turned into dwarfs. But it had to be a joke, Dave had told himself, some sort of very odd meme that everyone liked to share. No more real than Slender Man or Candle Cove.

The rumors became news stories, then scientists started to provide hard evidence and things started to go out of control fast. No one knew exactly what was going on, but the strangest thing was how little people panicked. Dave could still remember the first time he had read a news story about someone he had known shrinking. His hometown's first shrunken person, they had had biology or maybe chemistry together in high school. His name was Chris Berringer or something. The guy had been a bit of an asshole, but Dave would have never wished him to be ten inches tall though, that seemed a bit much.

Still, Dave's first thought, while watching the local news interview on his phone was, 'At least his wife's pretty hot.' The woman had been a cheerleader in high school and she still kept in shape, and all Dave had thought about was how cool it'd be to see her blown up to movie screen sized proportions every day for the rest of his life.

Now, though, he would bet money that Chris Berringer (or was it Derringer?) was now kept in a cage in the woman's closet while she had fun with her new husband. If she hadn't shrunk too that is.

Dave shuddered once more at the thought of being trapped in his own home as he gnawed on another crumb. By the time he was diagnosed, a few states were already passing protectorate bills that turned shrunken people into de facto property. If he had shrunk inside of his own apartment, he'd either have eventually starved to death or worse, been kidnapped by one of his neighbors the moment he tried to get out of the building.

When he first suspected he had lost two inches, he didn't tell anyone. Instead, he skulked around on websites until he found a doctor that also had the Shrinking Disease, because every one knew healthcare professionals were the biggest threat to someone with the disease. If you had a bad case, they might lock you up then and there and sell you off to somebody, but if they caught you early they might secretly sell off your information to the highest bidder. He had heard about some nurse in Texas who became a millionaire doing it, though he only knew that because she had also been stealing the shrinking people's identities which was somehow a worse crime than selling them.

When he had first gone into that doctor's office to be diagnosed, he was sweating bullets as he handed his paperwork and insurance card off to the cute Asian nurse. He couldn't help but imagine the tiny five foot two woman as a massive titan demanding he perform tricks for her amusement or else she'd sell him off to some lonely fat guy in the middle of nowhere. Even now, thinking about that first visit, Dave realized he was shaking from fear.

The doctor, a man who had dwindled down from 6'1'' to 5'5'' had been very sympathetic. He ran his tests, and he had Dave come in regularly to make sure there wasn't any further degradation. Two inches, then another one and then nothing for eight months. Barely anyone noticed that Dave had shrunk, he was still a tall guy especially in an office of relatively short people. Despite his doctor warning him that cases like his could just as easily lead to a massive shrinking attack, Dave had started to believe that he was through the worst of it.

It's why when someone needed to fly out to this city and deal with a small client, he had jumped at the chance. For nearly a year, the very thought of traveling had paralyzed him with fear. The thought of dwindling down to an inch in height while hiking or in some country where he didn't speak the language or in the middle of an airport where someone could whisk him away to anywhere in the world, filled him with so much anxiety that even seeing Jetblue ads on the subway made his heart race. Three inches though, that was just enough to make him need to hem his pants and bring in his suit jackets. It was no reason to stop living his life.

Or at least, that's what Dave had told himself right before he left for the airport.

Then it happened, right after he had said goodbye to the client and was about to start a nice weekend in a small city far away from anyone he knew. It had taken Dave several long seconds to even realize it was happening while he was walking down the street looking for a cool looking bar or nice restaurant to go into. His previous two attacks had happened while he slept, but he had heard people describe them as hot flashes that put you to sleep.

It had been a warm June day, and he ran a little hot anyway, so he hadn't thought much of the heat rising up his neck and cheeks, making him feel like his whole face was turning flush. Then he stumbled, like he was stone drunk, and that's when the first convulsion came and Dave knew he was in trouble. His doctor had warned him, he had warned him so many times, that if he did suffer from a big attack it wouldn't be the peaceful sleeping kind but like a violent urban legend-sized seizure.

It had been right before five o'clock on a Friday in the middle of summer, the streets were starting to fill up with people getting out of work. As he took another step forward, Dave lost a shoe, his laptop bag crashed to the ground, and his pants started to drift past his waist. Another convulsion forced him to bite down on his lip to keep from screaming. People stared at him as he did his best to get off the street and duck between two buildings. Intentionally or not, Dave started to shed his clothes and all he could think about was how he was basically creating a neon sign that said, 'shrunken idiot this way!'

A few more stumbling steps and violent convulsions, and he realized he was being weighed down by his own shirt. The attack ended suddenly, with only a lingering soreness and flash of heat to indicate anything had happened. He tripped over the knot in his tie as he stepped out of his own collar and then realized not that he was only six inches tall, but that he was completely nude.

Warm humid air kissed his skin as he stood somewhere in the middle of the alley staring at his own clothing spread out across the vast concrete canyon that was whatever alley he had stumbled into. His heart pounded as he took in the size of everything, trying to comprehend how his entire life could be over so quickly. His dry lips had just mouthed the word 'no' over and over again as he shook his head and tried to take it all in.

Then he laid eyes on his first giant.

She stood at the mouth of the alleyway, a mousy woman with frizzy blonde hair and wide framed glasses that were probably supposed to make her look like a cool hipster but instead made the rest of her face look strangely narrow. A flowing blouse with a weird bow at the neck, a pencil skirt, and dark pantyhose made the giant young woman look like someone who desperately wanted to be thought of as a sexy librarian. It was the chunky black leather heels that caught his attention though, the shoes were easily bigger than him and he watched as the monumental things flexed from the woman's unconscious thoughts.

When he looked back up to the sky, he saw the woman biting down on her lip, a mixture of lust and excitement etched across her billboard sized countenance. Again, Dave couldn't help but be aware of his own nudity and without a second thought he snatched up his shirt and started to back away. The thin cheap tie was cut to ribbons as it was dragged across the rough surface of the alleyway, and his undershirt remained where he had stumbled out of it, but Dave would be damned before he dropped the thick parachute sized shirt that was protecting his dignity.

Her stifled giggle echoed down the alley like a distant police siren.

Then she took one long luxurious step. Dave knew now that he didn't actually hear the step or feel it. In that moment though, as he watched the thick black shoe rise up and saw her calf muscles flex beneath the hose before the shoe crashed down, he was convinced he heard a sound like a thunderclap and that his whole body was shaken by an earthquake that could have reduced San Francisco to rubble.

That's when he started to run. He stumbled, and flailed, and screamed, all while his shirt billowed behind him like a massive oversized cape. The giant behind him found it hilarious, she couldn't stop herself from laughing as she took another step forward then another. He looked back, watching as she lazily took the time to grind her shoes against his clothes, rubbing dirt and grime into his slacks and ripping apart his socks for no reason other than that she could. She watched him as he ran, and cackled with glee as she started her meandering pursuit once more.

“Fee, fi, fo, fum,” her voice boomed like a fairy tale giant's as she stretched her pencil skirt as far as she could so she could take exaggerated stomps toward him.

As he ran as fast as he could, his breath coming in puffs and wheezes, searching for a way out, all Dave could actually think about was whether or not he had ever been so confident in his entire life. Looking back at the enormous woman who was probably barely old enough to drink, he couldn't imagine a single moment in his life where he had ever been as sure of something as she was that she would catch him. Worse, as his legs burned and she took another lackadaisical step, Dave began to wonder if she was right to be so confident, since there was no way he could escape.

Then he saw it, a quick flash as he ran that made him skid to a halt.

“That's riiiiiight,” she had let the word stretch out. The giantess then took a long hip swinging step that she probably thought was sexy, but looked ridiculous and a little frightening to the newly shrunken man. “There's no where for you to run, little man,” her booming voice almost lapsed into baby talk before she puckered her lips and blew him a kiss.

Dave crept back toward her, and his eyes darted to his left, where a completely unblocked pipe ran through what he thought was just more building, but actually lead into what looked like a backyard. A triumphant smile crossed her face as she looked down at him, her pointer finger wiggled toward herself in a 'come here' gesture, while the toe of her large menacing shoe tapped loudly against the ground. As he stood close to her, parallel to the old pipe, Dave actually felt the power of her footfall, a low tremor that coursed through his body with each tap.

He looked up at her and tried to imagine being owned by her.

If he had seen her earlier that day, before he had shrunk, he would have imagined it would be kind of fun. She was probably a nerdy girl that played video games that required a big powerful computer, she would treat him like a nice little pet and he would get to relax while she complained about a reboot or the backlash to a reboot or whatever dumb thing had bothered her that day. Before that moment as he looked up at her, all of Dave's thoughts of being shrunk ended in the same way; him free of life's responsibilities as a pet to someone who was nice.

Gazing up at the cruel smile on the woman's face, and the sheer sense of confidence and security that radiated off of her though, he knew that there was no kind of good ownership. She wasn't someone who had to fear ever being in this situation, or even if she did she was probably like he had been that very morning, incapable of believing it could happen to her. Knowing that his future at her hands was being used as a dildo and something to scrape dog shit off of her shoes, Dave did the only thing that he could and sprinted for that pipe.

She screamed in anger, a sound that made his whole body reverberate as his muscles burned in pain. Then he jumped, and his nude body bumped and scraped through the narrow metal tube, getting three quarters of the way before something yanked him back. His own shirt was caught up in the opening of the pipe, and through the blue and white gingham fabric he could see that menacing black heel grinding against it.

“No you fucking don't,” she practically screeched, her words literally making his ears ring.

Dave scrambled forward, ignoring the scrapes against his raw skin as he tumbled down into the yard and then yanked on his shirt. He heard it rip loudly, and when he stood up he watched as she kicked the rest of his shirt away while he wrapped his large piece around his bleeding body like a toga. She bent down and he could see her huge green eyes amplified by her massive oversized glasses, “You little bastard! Get over here!”

Her thin arm plunged through the drain pipe and Dave jumped back in fright, screaming his head off all the while. Her massive hand tore at the air he had been standing in, clenching and grasping for him before smacking futilely against the ground, her anguished shouts filling his ears.

Dave didn't think, he bolted for the far side of the massive yard as quickly as he could. And when he found a hole in that side's wall, he ran through the next yard, and the next and the next until he was ready to collapse.

He had no idea where he was going to go as he wandered through the city center. The sun was starting to plunge beneath the horizon, and he could hear the sound of the city's now enormous night life all around him. He would have passed the little storm drain by if the remnants of his shirt hadn't caught on the upturned chain-link fence.

Some trick of the light allowed him to see the hole in the wall beyond, and he crept toward it.

That first night, it had felt like the perfect place to hole up and catch a few hours of sleep, but as he adjusted to his new life of scavenging in the inner city, he worked hard to make it a true safe haven. Dave was small, but he reminded himself every day that he was still a human being. He could still solve problems with his brain, he could make tools to suit his needs, and he could survive on his own.

Sitting in his haven months later though, gnawing on the last remnants of his crumb stash, thinking about the giant schoolgirl who had imprisoned her former teacher, he doubted if that was true. Especially as his stomach roared with hunger and he felt a little dizzy. His whole life was contingent on scrounging crumbs in the morning, just so he could find food to get him through the rest of the day. The tiny man sobbed as he thought it over.

Then after what felt like minutes but could have been hours, he realized it was Thursday, and that meant there was at least a small silver lining in his day.

Vicki worked on Thursdays.