GENETITECH/BIOENG. confidential file
SUBJECT: --GOLDMAN, David
A.U. No.: --NC 654 55 D
S.C.I.D. No: --7474HHD
SUPERVISING DOCTOR: --Dr. Terrence LYNCH
ITEM: --Transcript of recorded testimony regarding subject's current condition. File for ASSESSMENT/INFO
[cont.]
I don't know how long I flitted on the edge of consciousness, trembling in the dim light as indistinct voices argued in the distance. It was like some kind of feverish dream, surreal and inexplicable. I was lying in the middle of a strange, featureless room made entirely of cardboard.
The air was dank with the stink of piss and puke. From the state of my clothes, it was obvious that both were my own. My soiled shirt and pants clung to my damp, clammy skin. I was so cold, I couldn't quit shaking. My teeth were chattering, my mouth tasted sour and stale, and my eyes were burning every time I blinked. I felt like I had the flu.
And somewhere beyond the walls of my cardboard prison, I could hear the voices of Carolyn and Eddie arguing. I strained to hear what was being said, but their voices were muffled and distant.
I shuddered violently at the memory of Carolyn's cruel smile, just before she had pressed the button. And I suddenly realized just where I was and what had happened. This room, my prison, was a shoebox. And I was, as near as I could tell, barely two inches tall.
"Hey!" I screamed, my throat raw and stinging. My pitiful cry went unanswered. I doubted they would have heard me even if they'd been in the room. I crawled out from under the giant washcloth and ran shivering to the side of the box. I pounded on it with my fists, screaming until my voice was hoarse.
Nothing.
I huddled in the corner, shivering miserably as I awaited my fate.
***
I sat up when I heard the sound of someone approaching. Over the last half hour or so, my fever and chills had abated. Probably just temporary side-effects of the shrinking process. So I was still two inches tall and covered with my own filth, but at least I didn't have the flu.
I heard the muted beeps of the lab door keypad, and a loud metallic snick as the door unlocked. The ceiling light was snapped on, bathing me in bright fluorescent. Heavy footsteps, and I could smell the cologne and the whiskey in the air. I braced myself, but was still unprepared for the sight of Eddie's massive face peering over the edge of the box.
"You're awake!" he whispered, grinning down at me. "Thank God! How do you feel?"
I backed as far from him as I could, glaring up apprehensively from the corner of the box. "Look what your [EXPLETIVE DELETED] wife did to me!" I screamed at him.
He sighed. "Carolyn told me what happened, and she's really sorry about the accident."
"What accident? She did this to me on purpose!"
Eddie gave me a placating smile. "Now, you know that's not true. Why would you think something like that?"
"Because she's a [EXPLETIVE DELETED] psycho, that's why!" I screamed at him, forgetting my fear for the moment. "She thought you were screwing around with Julie, so she tried to get back at you by [EXPLETIVE DELETED] me! And when I wouldn't, she got pissed and turned that [EXPLETIVE DELETED] ray on me!"
Eddie's face was suddenly cold. He frowned down at me and for a horrible moment, I imagined him reaching in and crushing me. My fear returned and I retreated to the safety of my corner.
"That's not the way she tells it," he told me. "She says you were showing her your work on the scan display, and you asked her to hit a button, but she hit the wrong one."
"That's bull[EXPLETIVE DELETED]!" I screamed at him, furious that he would choose to take her side. Hell, just the other day he'd made a snide comment about her trying to seduce me, so why was he all of the sudden convinced his wife was a [EXPLETIVE DELETED] saint?
Eddie slammed his hand on the table outside the box, but the jolt knocked me off my feet. And as I lay there trembling on my hands and knees, Eddie said in a strained voice, "That's enough. I know you've been through a lot, and you're probably still in shock or something, but I won't tolerate that kind of talk about my wife. Understand?"
I didn't look up and didn't respond, so Eddie nudged the box a bit roughly. "I said, understand?"
I nodded. "Yes."
"Okay, Carolyn and I were talking about the best way to deal with your situation, and we've decided it wouldn't be prudent to involve GenetiTech just yet. I'm too damn close to just hand this project over to Reynold and his [EXPLETIVE DELETED] flunkies."
"So, what are you saying?" I asked him. "You're going to keep me a secret until you figure out how to make me bigger?"
Eddie nodded. "I hope you understand why it's necessary."
"Necessary? Look at me!" I shouted. "I'm a freaking action figure and you're worried about somebody stealing your credit! I want to see Julie!"
Eddie shook his head. "Come on, Dave. Just think about it. You and me, we'll both go down in history. You're the first living thing to have ever been subjected to the reduction process! And you'll be the first to be restored, as soon as I can figure out how. When this is all said and done, you're not going to just be some footnote in a scientific journal. You're going to be a celebrity! You'll be on Letterman, Leno..."
"I don't care," I insisted. "I want to see Julie!"
"Okay, okay," Eddie said, sighing. "Just give me some time to figure out how best to explain the situation to her. I'm sure she'll agree that we need to keep you under wraps right now."
"I doubt it," I said.
"Just think about it, will you?" Eddie said, smiling once again. "I don't think things are as bad as you think. You'll feel better once Carolyn gets you cleaned up."
I thought again of Carolyn's cruel, vindictive smile when she pressed the button, and I shuddered at the thought of being in her care.
"I want to see Julie!" I called again to Eddie as he moved away. I don't know if he heard me or not, but he didn't respond. He walked off, letting the door shut behind him.
***
I'm no expert on the workings of the human mind, but with the benefit of hindsight I've been able to piece together the following:
I think Eddie's first inclination was to turn me over to GenetiTech, and to make the results of his project known to them. Even though it might have meant losing credit for his discovery, I personally believe Eddie would have been willing to make this sacrifice. Despite his shortcomings, he was always a decent person.
But, Carolyn wanted to keep me a secret, so she convinced Eddie it would be in his best interest to do so. And although he felt it wasn't right, he knew that this way, he'd get the credit and recognition (and money) that he so desperately wanted. So, only slightly reluctant, he went along with the idea.
Personally, I think that's why he believed Carolyn's story over mine. Because if he accepted the fact that his psycho wife shrunk me on purpose, his flimsy justification for concealing me would be torn to shreds. He'd feel compelled to hand me over to GenetiTech, along with all of his research because, as I mentioned, he was always a decent person.
So as long as what happened to me was an accident, Carolyn would be blameless and Eddie could still think of himself as the good guy while he kept my condition a secret and worked to finish his invention. In his mind, it was a win/win situation for all of us.
Of course, poor Eddie had no idea just what Carolyn was capable of.
***
About ten minutes later, I heard someone coming. From the slapping sound her sandals made on her approach, I knew it was Carolyn even before she punched in the code.
The sight of Eddie had been terrifying, but I felt nothing but bitter, impotent anger when Carolyn's massive face loomed into view. She puckered her lips into an affectionate, playful gasp, and let out a quiet "awwwww" as she regarded me. I struggled vainly to take her in all at once, my mind reeling as my eyes darted from her monstrous, blinking eye to her cavernous mouth. Imagine looking at an actress when you're standing less than a foot from the movie screen.
Her warm, wet breath assaulted me with the acrid smell of cigarettes. I could smell the greasy odor of her makeup, caked and powdery on her monstrous cheeks. I could see tiny particles of black mascara lose themselves each time she blinked, flittering in the air in particles too small for her to even notice. There were tiny, white hairs along her upper lip, invisible to all but me.
"Leave me alone," I snapped, turning my back on her.
Carolyn made a tsking sound. "Don't be like that, sweetie. I'm sorry about our little accident..."
"It wasn't an accident," I said angrily, my arms crossed, my back still to her. "You [EXPLETIVE DELETED] liar!"
She exhaled loudly, and I felt her breath wash over me. I could sense her nearness, feel the heat from her, but I refused to look at her.
"Such language," Carolyn said in an amused voice. "Looks like we may have to wash your little mouth out with soap."
"You won't get away with this," I told her, walking away from her. "Eddie may not believe me, but Julie will. She already knows about how you've been..."
Carolyn nudged the box with her hand, jarring it violently. I stumbled forward and landed on my hands and knees with a grunt. As I was climbing to my feet, she chuckled and bumped the box again. This time I lurched into the cardboard wall.
"Stop it!" I screamed, whirling to face her. "Just stop it!"
Carolyn pressed her face in closer, and I scrambled backwards to get away. She sniffed a couple of times, then wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Why don't you get out of those dirty clothes?" she offered sweetly. "I'll give you a bath."
I just stared at her, shaking my head in disbelief.
"Either you take them off, or I will," she said. Then, she suddenly bared her teeth in an evil grin that made my blood run cold. "Ooh, that's not such a bad idea."
Trembling with anger and frustration at my own helplessness, I kicked off my shoes and yanked off my socks. Carolyn raised her face from the box and peered down, watching me undress. I peeled off my damp shirt and pants, and slid off my underwear. When I was done, I stood naked and shaking.
She placed her hand inside the box, palm up. I stared at the giant, intruding hand, imagining how it might feel to be grasped between those tree-like fingers. Her fingernails were red and shiny, reflecting my silhouette in their shield-like curve.
"Come on, Dave," she chirped, making kissing sounds as if calling a dog. I approached her hand and stepped up onto her palm, trembling with the sensation of her warm, thick flesh beneath my bare soles. I walked slowly across her lined palm, watching her fingers twitch slightly with every step. At last, her hand shifted beneath me, and I struggled to keep my balance as she lifted me from the shoebox.
Once free of the confines of the makeshift cardboard cage, the sheer enormity of the room overwhelmed me. We were still in the lab, but its dimensions were inconceivable. The walls were blurry and indistinct, as if part of some distant landscape. I stared in awe at this terrifying scale, struggling to contain my vertigo as I stood in Carolyn's palm. I turned and gazed up into her face, wincing at the smile she offered me.
I would eventually come to dread that smile, playful and predatory, in the months to come. It was a smile that would evoke such feelings of helplessness and impotence, a smile that would forever consign me to the role of Carolyn's possession, something to be petted and played with. But for the moment, the smile was merely infuriating and I wanted so desperately to slap it off of her face.
"This is going to be fun," she whispered to me, just before her massive fingers closed around me.
***
I squirmed and kicked as Carolyn held me under the faucet and let the warm water sluice over me. Then she held me tightly, gripping me around the waist with her finger and thumb while she covered my body with two dollops of liquid soap. The smell of the stuff tickled my nose and made my eyes water. I sneezed twice as she rubbed my soapy skin with her index finger.
"Bless you," Carolyn giggled, holding me under the water once more. When I was rinsed off, she wrapped me in a green wash cloth and buffeted me around inside the rough fabric, drying me off.
"There now," she said, smiling down at me as I shivered in her hand. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
I just glared at her, saying nothing as she caressed me with her index finger.
She sighed and shook her head. "Don't be like that, sweetie. I'm going to be taking care of you until Eddie figures out how to make you big again, so you might as well stop sulking."
"Stop sulking? LOOK AT ME!" I screamed, pounding on her finger with my fist as it stroked my chest. "Look what you did to me, you colossal [EXPLETIVE DELETED] bitch!"
"Poor baby," Carolyn said, ignoring my outburst as she continued to pet me. "I think I know something that might cheer you up."
I stopped shouting and glared at her suspiciously, distrusting her sympathetic smile and pleasant voice. "What?" I asked.
She glanced over towards the open bathroom door. She closed it partially, not letting it latch, then carried me over to the toilet. The lid and tank were adorned with green doilies that matched the guest towels, and a green candle gave off an overwhelming pi¤a colada smell. She sat down on the closed lid and crossed her leg. I stared down over the edge of her palm, marveling reluctantly at the sight of her monstrous foot. Her sandal dangled, swinging back and forth as she flexed her long, slender toes. Her toenails were red and shiny, just like her fingernails.
I gasped at the sudden onslaught of my erection, unbidden and unwelcome. And all too obvious as I lay naked in Carolyn's palm. She flipped me on my back and toyed with it, flicking at it with her fingernail until I moaned out loud.
"You want this, don't you?" she whispered to me. I heard her sandal fall to the floor with a thud. She picked me up with her finger and thumb and held me, dangling, above her foot. I stared at her toes, wiggling slowly and seductively, spreading slightly as I was lowered towards them. My heart was pounding, my breaths were short and quick, and my erection was throbbing so hard I thought it was going to snap. Closer and closer... Her toes spread to grasp me, and I braced myself for the sensation...
"Carolyn!" Eddie called from the hallway. "What are you doing in there?"
I was yanked roughly through the air as Carolyn leapt to her feet and grabbed the wash cloth from the basin. "Just drying him off," she said, once again dabbing at me with green rag.
"Well, hurry up. I need to get some work done today."
Carolyn looked down at me with a playful pout. "Too bad, sweetie," she whispered. "Maybe next time."
I didn't answer. I kept telling myself again and again that it was a close call, that Eddie's intervention had saved me from humiliation. But deep down, as much as I hated to admit it, I was disappointed that we had been interrupted.
***
"Was there any kind of discomfort at all?" Eddie was asking me. The reel-to-reel was rolling, and the massive microphone was set on the workbench next to me, to capture my every word.
"Not until I woke up," I told him. "I felt like I had the flu. Fever, chills, and really dizzy. Plus, I apparently threw up and peed all over myself while I was out." Carolyn had washed my clothes and returned them to me just an hour ago, taking perverse delight in making me climb into her hand to retrieve them.
Eddie nodded and scribbled some notes on his legal pad. "Do you feel like you're suffering from any adverse effects right now?"
"What? You mean, besides being the size of a [EXPLETIVE DELETED] mouse? Other than that, I think I'm healthy."
Eddie sighed. "As soon as I figure out how to explain this to Julie, we'll see about securing a doctor to check you out. But in the meantime, you appear to be okay."
"When can I see Julie?"
"I'm still trying to figure out how to bring her on board without alerting Reynold and half of GenetiTech what I've been up to." He snapped off the tape recorder and offered me a conciliatory smile. "Next week, okay? After the Fourth of July weekend. I promise."
"I'm not comfortable with this situation," I told him. "I'm not comfortable around your wife."
"Aw, come on, Dave. She just wants to help take care of you. She feels partially responsible for what happened..."
"Partially?" I jumped to my feet. "I told you what happened, and it was no accident!"
Eddie shook his head. "Be reasonable, Dave."
"Reasonable? I think I'm being more than [EXPLETIVE DELETED] reasonable by going along with you on this. The least you can do is keep your wife away from me!"
He just looked at me, obviously discomforted by the idea. His mouth opened, but he didn't say anything.
"Just humor me, Eddie. Okay?"
Resigned, he slumped his shoulders and exhaled slowly. "Okay, Dave. I'll see what I can do."
***
I paced around the workbench while Eddie focused on the schematics taped to his blackboard. The spare parts scattered about the surface were now massive structures, piled like cars at an automotive graveyard. In the midst of these parts stood Eddie's machine--his pride and joy--towering like an office building.
The gigantic monitor still displayed my image, rotating slowly in rendered 3D, with my modified statistics blinking in red. In front of the entire assembly was the keyboard, as big as a [EXPLETIVE DELETED] tennis court. I estimated that, were I to lay across the keys, I might be able to span four of them. I imagined myself hopping from letter to letter, like Archy the cockroach, slowly but deliberately typing out a message for help.
The phone rang somewhere in the distance. Eddie didn't have a phone in the lab, and he never kept the portable with him. He hated to be disturbed, and Carolyn was always under strict orders to take his messages and leave him alone unless it was an emergency.
Which is why he was startled and a little annoyed when Carolyn punched in the security code and came into the lab.
"What is it?" he growled, throwing a piece of chalk against the blackboard in disgust.
Carolyn looked a little agitated. "It was Julie, calling from GenetiTech. She said she wanted to say goodbye to Dave before she left for the holiday, and when I told her he couldn't be disturbed right now, she said she'd swing by on her way out of town to visit."
I felt a sense of elation at the news. Julie would be coming here. My secret would be out, and I wouldn't have to endure any more of Carolyn's games. She'd notify GenetiTech, and they'd notify my family. It wouldn't solve all my problems, but it would certainly make them more bearable.
"What did you tell her?" Eddie asked, his voice shaking.
"What do you mean, what did I tell her?" Carolyn demanded. "I didn't tell her anything!"
"[EXPLETIVE DELETED], she's coming to visit Dave!" Eddie shouted. "What the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] are we going to do?"
I stood there, watching the exchange with growing anxiety, seeing my chance at freedom slipping away.
"Hang on," Carolyn said, holding up a finger to silence Eddie. "Let me think for a second."
"What's to think about?" I shouted. "You tell Julie what happened, and you deal with it! Game over!"
"Okay, how about this?" Carolyn said. "We take your machine outside and set it up in the garage. Then we roll Dave's car onto some of those little plastic sheets and we shrink it. Then, when Julie gets here, we tell her Dave drove home to see his family for Independence Day."
"What? No!" I screamed.
Eddie nodded. "Okay. It'll buy us some time."
"Right," Carolyn said, smiling nervously at me. "Plenty of time."
"You can't!" I screamed. "This is [EXPLETIVE DELETED] kidnapping!"
"I'll deal with him," Carolyn said, walking towards me. "You start carrying stuff outside."
Eddie gave me an apologetic glance and shrugged helplessly, to let me know it was out of his hands.
I thrashed desperately as Carolyn picked me up. She held me up so that her mouth was terrifyingly close, and she whispered, "You be a good boy, and I'll let you play between my toes until you come your little brains out."
I was still screaming when she tucked me into her shorts pocket.
***
I spent about twenty minutes jammed in the tight confines of her pocket, feeling the warm flesh of her thigh through the thin cotton of her shorts. I could hear the muffled sounds of them working frantically, and it wasn't long before I was drenched with both her sweat and my own. I finally gave up my struggles and lay still, defeated.
At one time, I felt her fingers stroking me through the fabric, making sure I was still there. I feigned unconsciousness, hoping she would be moved enough to pull me out of that miserable prison at least long enough to check me out. But I guess she and Eddie were too preoccupied with keeping me a secret to see to my well-being.
Finally, light spilled into her pocket as her two fingers slid in and groped for me. She grabbed me by the arm and gently pulled me free. I blinked in the bright afternoon sun and sighed in relief as she held me up to her face. It was streaked with sweat and grime, and her makeup was smeared.
Glancing around, I saw Eddie's shrinking machine--sorry, "matter proportioning matrix"--sitting on an old washing machine. We were in the garage of their house. Carolyn's Saturn had been backed out into the driveway, and the concrete floor was covered with the plastic sheets containing border circuits.
"We need your keys," Carolyn informed me, breathing heavily from exertion.
I snickered. "Yeah? Well you should have thought about that before you [EXPLETIVE DELETED] shrunk me. They're in my pocket!"
"Yeah, I was afraid of that," Carolyn said, sighing wearily. "Do you have a spare key? Like in case you lock yourself out of your car?"
I did, in fact. In a little magnetic carrier fastened to the underside of my rear bumper. But I figured, why make things easier for them? So I shook my head and said, "Sorry."
"Oh well," she said, then called out to her husband, "We're going to have to push it in with your truck!"
"Dammit," Eddie muttered. He called back, "We're running out of time!"
"Then get busy," Carolyn barked back at him. She sighed at me, rolling her eyes as if we were co-conspirators. "I swear, that man wouldn't last two days without me telling him what to do."
"Carolyn," I said, struggling to keep my voice reasonable. I was still dangling in front of her face, my arm stretched overhead and pinched between her two fingers. And truth be told, it was starting to hurt.
"Yes, sweetie?"
"Please call this off. Just tell Julie what happened when she gets here, and let the doctors at GenetiTech..."
She exhaled, blowing right into my face and grinning when she saw me wince. "I swear, Dave. I'm starting to take this personally." She lowered me into the palm of her hand and tickled me with her fingernail. "You can't tell me you're not enjoying this a little."
Outside the garage, Eddie's truck started up noisily. The engine revved a couple of times, then I heard a crunch and the sound of tires scraping pavement.
"I better go see if Eddie needs any help," Carolyn said, wearily. Ignoring my protests, she shoved me back into her pocket.
***
I missed most of what happened next, but I got the whole story from Julie later.
Thanks the miracle of anti-theft steering, Eddie and Carolyn couldn't turn my steering wheel without the ignition key. So Eddie was using his truck to shove the back end of my car around, so that it was pointed towards the garage. It was lined up, and he was in the process of pushing my little Fiat onto the plastic sheets when Julie came driving up.
It was quite a scene that followed. Julie asked where I was, and Eddie panicked and told her that I was gone. So Julie asked what any logical person would. Why was Eddie shoving my car into the garage?
Eddie started to stammer, desperately trying to think of something to say, and Julie grew more and more suspicious by the minute. She didn't know the exact nature of Eddie's experiment, but she knew the nature of the project he had inherited, and she was suddenly struck with the horrible suspicion that somehow, Eddie had accidentally made me disappear.
Like I said, I found out about all of that later. At the time, I was tucked in Carolyn's pocket and couldn't hear anything more than a muffled, indistinct exchange. I thought I recognized Julie's voice, and I struggled and screamed desperately. Of course she didn't hear me.
But it was about that time that Carolyn suddenly ran into the garage. I was knocked about inside her pocket, the rapid slaps of her sandals accenting each jarring thud. I heard her rummaging around, knocking things over, spilling things on the floor. I heard metallic drawers open and slam as she searched for something.
According to Julie, she and Eddie were screaming in each other's faces when Carolyn came walking out of the garage with a revolver. Eddie's eyes grew wide and he asked Carolyn what the hell she was doing, but Carolyn told him to shut the hell up. She commanded Julie to drop her keys on the ground, then led her at gunpoint into the garage.
Long story short, Carolyn finally pulled me out of her pocket. We were in the lab, and I trembled in the sudden chill of the air-conditioning. Carolyn was flushed and breathing heavily, her face streaked with sweat and grime. But she was grinning triumphantly, like a cat that's cornered a mouse.
"Well, that went better than I had hoped," she said, looking down at me in her palm. She brushed my damp hair out of my eyes with her fingertip, then set me down inside the shoebox.
Right next to the crumpled, unconscious form of Julie.
"Tend to her, Dave," Carolyn told me. "I've got to go outside and help Eddie shrink y'all's cars."
***
Poor Julie hadn't thrown up like I had, but she had emptied her bowels as well as her bladder. That [EXPLETIVE DELETED] machine was hell on the bodily functions. I hated for her to wake up like that, on top of everything else. I just hoped she'd come to in time for me to talk to her before Carolyn came back in.
I nudged her and shook her, but had no luck reviving her. She just lay there, breathing slowly and deeply. I finally rolled her on her back and stretched out her legs, thinking that might be more comfortable for her. Between Julie's mess and mine from that morning, the shoe box smelled pretty rank.
I heard approaching footsteps and sighed, wondering what ignominy lay ahead for me and Julie. Hopefully, it would be nothing more than another bath in the sink.
The code pad beeped, and the door snicked open. Carolyn came walking in and peered down at us. "She still sleeping?"
I nodded. "Yeah. That machine knocks you out for an hour or so."
"Oh well," she said. "I've got something I want to show you."
I eyed her nervously. "What?"
"Hang on." She knelt down, out of sight. Then, suddenly she popped back up into view and reached down for me. Grasping me by the waist, she lifted me out of the shoebox. She knelt and set me down on the carpet.
She stood up quickly, looming over me and peering down. I looked straight ahead and saw Julie's BWM and my Fiat. They were tiny, fragile toys next to Carolyn's dirty sandaled foot.
"Aren't they adorable?" she asked, giggling. There were several dents in the rear fender, and one of the front headlights was broken. "I swear, they're just the cutest little things."
"It was the funniest thing," Carolyn said. She slid her foot out of her shoe and prodded my car with her big toe. "Poor Eddie had so much trouble getting your car into the garage. First he'd knock it this way..." She demonstrated by sliding my car along the carpet with the side of her foot. "And then he'd bump it this way..."
I watched bitterly as she toyed with my car, my resentment towards her boiling up. My stomach was knotted, and I could taste bile in the back of my throat.
"When he finally got it lined up, he hit it from behind and knocked it into the garage." At this point, she kicked my car and sent it skipping across the carpet. It came to a stop, bouncing on its groaning springs.
"I guess he hit it a little hard," she said. "I told him to just push it, but it's been a stressful day for poor Eddie. Anyway, you'll never guess what came falling off the bumper."
I glanced up, feeling a sense of dread. Her playful mood had faded, and now Carolyn looked pissed. In her hand, clutched between her finger and thumb, she held my spare key.
"Carolyn..." I began, desperately searching for something to say that might appease her. She stepped over the cars, and her bare foot slammed down on the carpet, just inches from me. The force was enough to make me stumble backwards. Her toes were streaked with dirty sweat and grime.
"I ought to make you lick it clean," she snarled, nudging me hard with her toe. I fell flat on my back and stared up helplessly as her foot slowly descended. "Would you like that? Huh?"
"I'm sorry!" I screamed, my face muffled by her thick, wrinkled sole. I squirmed frantically, trying to loose myself as she pressed down harder and harder.
"Be still!" she snapped, and I ceased my struggles. "It would be so easy to squish you right now," she told me. "And the only thing that's stopping me is I don't feel like explaining it to Eddie." She moved her foot slightly, uncovering my face. I peered up through the crack between her toes at her scowling face.
"You and your little friend Julie won't be going anywhere for a while," she said, "so you might as well make the best of the situation. And you'd better start working really hard to get back on my good side, or I'll shove you down the garbage disposal. You understand?"
I nodded weakly. "Yes."
She mashed down, making me cry out. "Yes, what?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said. Suddenly, her foot was gone. I lay there, heaving and trembling, trying so hard not to cry while she was still standing there, watching.
She knelt down and gathered up the cars, then scooped me up in her other hand. Standing, she dropped me roughly into the shoe box. Then she reached down and plucked up Julie's limp form.
"I'm going to go give Miss Julie a bath and wash her nasty clothes," Carolyn told me, setting the cars down on the workbench. "And I want you to remember one thing... it's your fault we had to shrink her. If you hadn't lied about your [EXPLETIVE DELETED] key, we would have had your car out of the way long before she showed up."
Carolyn turned and walked away, leaving me sobbing in the shoe box.
***
Giantess World
Summer Job by Cayce