Even though the weather had warmed significantly since the move, Scott attributed the lack of a chill in the vast space of Carmen's new apartment to the building itself rather than the changing seasons. If he stood far enough back from the distant windows, the little man could just make out tree limbs that were still mostly bare. So even as Carmen switched to lighter jackets and less insulated footwear, he knew that it was probably cold enough out that he would have been shivering in her old place.

It was hard to ignore how much nicer the new apartment was, especially since it was his job to keep it as nice as possible. Most of his days were still spent pushing around cut up swiffer pads or sponges along the expansive tile plains of her kitchen or bathroom while his nights were spent with her feet looming on either side of him. It wasn't all endless drudgery though, he had plenty of time to simply lay comfortably on the plush carpet or wander her enormous apartment. He often perused the video games and movies that filled the shelves of her entertainment center but sometimes, Scott found himself wandering into her new cavernous closet.

His hands would drift across the worn exteriors of the giantess's shoes, the scent of her feet tickling his nose. He would look up at the shirts and dresses that hung high overhead, forming a fabric canopy over his little world. It was in those moments that the little man found himself impatient for her to arrive home.

At first, Scott told himself that it was because he grew bored of walking around what was essentially a prison. Yet, more than once, he realized he didn't know how long he had been sitting with his head leaning against the toe of her Doc Martens while his hands lovingly ran over the yellow stitching. The stale scent of her that emanated from the old pair of boots was almost comforting and every time he recognized that's how it made him feel, his body shuddered just a little.

He always feared that one day Carmen would come home and see him cuddled up among her shoes. Scott could imagine the way she would smile and her toes would wiggle before she leaned forward and cooed down at him, inviting him to come cuddle up against her foot if he was such a loving little man. The worst part about the scenario, whenever he played it in his tiny head was how nice it seemed and how much he wanted to just flop down atop her bare toes and listen to her complain about her day.

She was paid far better than she used to be and actually seemed to care about what she was doing at her job but Carmen still complained about it endlessly. Listening to her thunder on while he pounded away at her wrinkled soles was a regular part of Scott's day, and while he didn't hate it as much as he once had, he couldn't help but feel a strange pang of jealousy at how normal it all seemed.

All of these thoughts swirled around in Scott's head every day, simply another part of his routine.

A routine that was shattered one morning when he awoke to Carmen's hand wrapping around him. “Shit, shit, shit,” the giantess muttered as he was swung wildly about before coming to jarring stop before Carmen's face, “How did neither of us notice my alarm?”

Her morning breath rolled over him and he squirmed in her fist, uncertain if the question was rhetorical. His answer came not from the giantess but from the walls of her purse when he was shoved inside of it. Scott stumbled amid the various other objects that sat inside the vast leather bag, which he immediately found himself dodging when the huge prison was hoisted into the sky.

The walls around him undulated and shook as Carmen rushed out of her apartment then tapped her foot impatiently during the elevator ride to the parking garage. Scott tried to peer up through the open zipper but all he could see was Carmen's hands wrapped around the straps, the fingernails he had painted a deep purple the night before still glossy and unmarred. Her footfalls echoed in the cement parking structure and he was again jostled about as she practically speed walked to her car before the bag was haphazardly smacked down into the passenger seat.

A tampon toppled over like a tree and knocked him down before he could even shout. He pushed against the crinkly wrapper with all his might but it didn't budge. Scott had to simply lay there with its weight pinning him down and hope that Carmen's movements would dislodge it when she got to work.

Hope filled his little body when the tampon rolled back and forth across his chest while Carmen rushed into the building and her badge slapped loudly against the RFID reader. Yet, it remained balanced atop him, making it difficult but not impossible to breathe as the purse hit the floor. Carmen offered muttered apologies about being late to other giants but no one seemed to actually care.

Scott vaguely recognized the voice that started to drone on as belonging to a bland mediocre engineer whose name he had always forgotten. While his performance reviews were never stellar, he wasn't actually bad at his job, simply not worthy of being promoted, which didn't seem to bother him. The only complaint that Scott could remember hearing from his coworkers, on an almost constant basis, was his tendency to schedule pointless meetings where nothing got done and make overly long presentations in larger meetings that were supposed to be quick and succinct.

Trapped beneath a tampon, Scott was forced to stare up at the underside of the table while listening to the engineer's booming monotony be occasionally interrupted by the creaking of chairs or someone coughing. After months of listening to giants speak, Scott had thought he had learned how to completely tune them out but as he wriggled uncomfortably beneath a tube that was covered in bright yellow wrapping, he found himself unable to do anything but absorb every pointless word.

He had no idea if the meeting had lasted only ten minutes or an hour but he was too weak to even feel humiliated when Carmen noticed him pinned down inside her purse. She scooped him up with a small box of breath mints and placed him on the floor before tossing one of the mints up into her mouth.

“You be a good little guy,” she boomed as she corralled him beneath her desk, the dark V of her Veja sneaker bumping into him, “And clean these up while I work.”

The floor trembled as her powerful feet landed on either side of him and he heard her fingers clack loudly against a keyboard high overhead. A computer tower hummed nearby and cast the underside of the desk in a cool blue light while the office's lights burned bright beyond his owner's enormous chair. Across a stretch of thin carpeting, Scott could see a giant working at their standing desk, either not caring or completely oblivious to the fact that Carmen had brought her shrinkee to work.

Somewhere in the back of his head, some long quiet voice was screaming for him to run. He could move in any direction and find someone he might know, someone who could help him but then Carmen's right foot thumped down and his gaze was drawn toward it. Scott looked up, expecting to see her glaring down at him but it had only been a brief unconscious movement.

Walking up to the sneaker, he knelt before it and dragged his tongue across a dirty streak. He could feel the warmth emanating from her foot within and every time her toes wiggled, he was reminded of just how powerful Carmen was. Her scent was all around him as he worked his way up and down the vast sneakers, easily avoiding being clipped or knocked about when she shifted to a more comfortable position, and he smiled every time he breathed it in.

He hadn't even noticed his stomach rumbling until he felt the approach of another giant, and a youthful masculine voice thundered above, “Here's your lunch, Ms. Valencia.”

“Thanks,” she said absentmindedly, her fingers still clacking loudly against a keyboard.

He heard wax paper crinkle above and a moment later Carmen's lips were smacking together high overhead. “Mhm, oh...” the world rumbled as she pushed back from her desk and lowered her palm to the floor, “C'mere.”

Scott quickly scurried into her waiting hand and huddled close to her warm flesh while she lifted him up into the sky. Carmen smiled down at him before she licked a spot of mayo off of her bottom lip and then gestured toward the other half of her sandwich. “You can have some of my sandwich,” she boomed before wagging her finger, “But no chips, I don't want you turning into a little chonker.”

His cheeks flushed and Carmen's index finger smacked against his bare buttocks before she returned her attention to the enormous monitors on her desk. Kneeling down before the towering sandwich, Scott tore bits of turkey and lettuce and bread off of it and dug in. His belly was full long before Carmen had finished her meal, eating slowly as she worked.

Laid out on the side of her desk, he alternated between simply gazing up at her as she worked and listening to the chatter of the office around him. He recognized a few of the voices but no one he would have actually considered a friend; an overly chipper technical writer who had so little to do that he often just wandered about bothering others, a programmer who 'worked best on her feet' and spent the day pacing about writing on whiteboards and grumbling to herself, and a middle manager who clearly regretted taking his promotion and spent most of his days trying to micromanage people. Then there was the low level hum of people talking as they collaborated, sales people making their pitches, and the small talk that bubbled across cubicles.

The little man found himself frowning as he took it all in and he couldn't help but wonder why the hell he had missed it.

A shadow loomed over his world and he cowered when he recognized Taylor's face looming over Carmen's desk. His owner pulled her headphones down to her neck and looked up. “Hey, Car-car,” Taylor boomed, “Have you gotten that stuff over to Brian, yet?”

“Oh, uh,” Carmen sighed, “It completely slipped my mind, sorry.”

“It's fine, just you know, he needs it by the end of day so he can send it out to everyone tomorrow and then no one can complain that they didn't know about migrating to the new platform and yeah, you get it.”

“Ok, I guess, I'll just...” she looked at her screens and frowned, “Take care of it right now.”

“Sounds good,” Taylor smiled before she looked down and noticed Scott, “Aw, you brought your wittle guy to work, huh? He helping you out?”

Taylor's finger rushed in and Scott braced himself to be flicked or poked but instead, the finger tickled against his belly while she cackled above. Carmen's finger tousled his hair and then slipped beneath his chin, forcing him to crane his neck back to stare up at them both.

“Yes, he is,” Carmen cooed, blowing a kiss down at him, “He's being a big help by sitting there and being so cute. Isn't that right?”

Scott's cheeks flushed but his body relaxed as the two giantesses smiled down at him. “Y-yes...” he nervously shouted back.

Carmen grinned and Taylor's cackle rang out above.

“Alright, well I'll leave you to it,” Taylor stepped away before asking, “Oh, and Saturn's tonight?”

“Definitely,” Carmen called back before she returned her attention to her monitors. Her shoulders slumped when she began to close whatever she was working on and started drafting an email. She frowned and her dark eyes settled on Scott, “If I can finish this bullshit and my actual work anyway. You're lucky, little guy, all you have to do is keep being a cutie.”

She brushed her finger against him one last time before she went back to work but her words rang in Scott's little head for the rest of the day. Obviously, Carmen knew that he did all sorts of menial tasks for her, since she was the one who commanded him to do them. Yet, as he continued listening to the booming noise of the office around him, Scott couldn't help but think about all the bullshit he was free from. He didn't have any coworkers to put up with, he didn't question whether or not his job actually had a point or if the company he worked for did anything resembling good, he didn't need to worry about bills or anything like that.

He knew what Carmen could do to him if he disobeyed or upset her, the very thought sent a chill down his spine, but he also knew exactly what was expected of him. Watching her become frustrated as she wrote some bullshit email about cloud infrastructure, Scott couldn't help but feel oddly relieved that he would never have to do something like that in his entire life.

Every time he had thought about his old life, when he had been normal sized, he had thought about the freedom he had had. How he obviously could do what he wanted without threat of a giant squashing him or eating him or any other horrific fates that made him shudder in horror. Yet, it wasn't like he was ever going to drop everything and just drive out of the city one day like he was proving some point about being free in a movie. He had too many responsibilities for that and now his only responsibility was making sure that Carmen was happy.

The thought left a smile on his lips as he lay in the bottom of her purse hours later, while she opened up a small pack of tissues and dropped them down beside him. “There you go, little guy,” she said with a smile, “You can stuff some of that in your wittle ears before I go inside.”

She beamed down at him, clearly pleased with her solution for carrying him into a karaoke bar, and then waited patiently for him to comply. Scott tore off scraps and plugged up his ears, the world instantly becoming more muffled.

“Good boy,” Carmen's voice was no longer the booming basso he was used to, it was still low but in a smoky sort of way and he wondered if that was how she sounded to other giants. He listened to her exchange pleasantries with a looming bouncer a moment later, and Scott couldn't help but think about how sexy her voice was.

The din of the bar was loud but not quite overpowering.

With the tissues pressed inside of his ears, Scott felt like it was only a little worse than it would have been had he been normal-sized. It was difficult for him to hear anything besides someone's off-key rendition of Smash Mouth's 'All-Star' but he managed to parse Carmen's voice directly above as she ordered a drink and chatted with Taylor and a few other women. His leather prison was hung on a hook beneath the bar and much like that morning in the meeting, he found himself staring at the underside of a table high above.

At least the bar had neon lights running beneath it that slowly shifted over time. Watching it, the tiny man felt like he was observing the northern lights, or at least how they always appeared in movies. A pang of regret filled Scott for a moment, as he thought about all the things he had never had time for and told himself that he would get around to one day. He would probably never see the northern lights in person, unless it was because Carmen had him lashed down to a pair of snow boots and had stuck her leg out explicitly so he could.

“At least I hadn't shrunk on vacation,” he suddenly muttered to himself.

Scott had only a vague idea of how other countries treated shrunken people. He wanted to believe that some places were more compassionate or treated it like the serious medical issue that it should have been but he wondered if any culture could resist the way people toyed with shrinkees on social media. Would he have ended up in some enormous hospital where no one spoke English, struggling to learn another language while he was theoretically taken care of, or would he be in the exact same position he was now but just in a different country?

Shadows danced across the bar above but he knew it wasn't Carmen since he could hear her belting out Alanis Morissette's 'You Outta Know' backed up by a decent amount of the other women in the bar. He squirmed uncomfortably at the bottom of her purse, suddenly very aware of how vulnerable he was without her.

He could just make out the conversation above him between two women and a guy. “You should say something, babe,” one of the girls thundered.

“If, uh, I guess if you guys really want me to...” the giant boomed, a nervous edge to his voice.

“He's been hanging around us all night and he's not going to go away,” fumed the second girl.

“Babe, seriously, do something about him.”

“Ok, I'll...” the giant sighed, “I'll talk to him, I guess.”

“Talk to him? No, tell him you'll kick his ass if he doesn't stop leering at your girlfriend,” the first giantess demanded, “Jesus.”

“I'm not-” even though Scott couldn't see it, he could easily imagine the guy shaking his head, “Alright, fine.”

The trio walked off and Scott's stomach churned as he thought about the confrontation that was occurring. More than once he had been press ganged into playing the 'tough guy' role by a girlfriend or a female friend. On a rare few occasions, he had felt good about making a space feel safer for other people and driving assholes out of a bar or party or whatever. Most of the time though, it was stupid situations that got out of hand or just a completely unnecessary thing that he had to do for no particularly good reason.

Just imagining it was exhausting to Scott and then he smirked as he thought about how no one could expect him to do something like that anymore. He was a shrinkee, there was no way for him to stand up to or intimidate anyone anymore.

Laying back in the purse, the shrunken man got comfortable as he listened to people sing one after another. When Carmen left, he couldn't help but laugh quietly to himself as he listened to her and Taylor discuss the shoving match that had broken out almost instantly after Carmen finished her song. Their laughter rang out across the empty night as they imitated the two giants, barking 'bro' over and over again.

Left alone in the apartment the following day, strange thoughts continued to swirl through Scott's head. He felt like he was constantly swinging between all the regrets he felt about losing his old life and the reminders of all the stupid shit that he had simply forgotten about. When he had been trapped in Ethan's underwear drawer and forced to listen to the giant babble on about high school problems, it had been easy to romanticize his life as an adult.

Sitting on the floor of Carmen's apartment, cuddled up beside the sneakers she had worn yesterday, Scott knew that being an adult was inherently better than being a teenager. Yet, as he breathed in Carmen's scent emanating from the mouth of her white sneakers, he couldn't help but wonder if being a pet might be better than being a person.

The question was still rattling around in his brain when his owner came home and scooped him up without any greeting. Her flats clattered somewhere down beside the door and a moment later he was stumbling then bouncing across her couch cushions as she settled down and presented her sweaty bare soles in front of him. The sound of her Playstation booting up echoed across the world and it wasn't long before her toes were scrunching overhead as she unwound from the week by playing some game he didn't recognize.

Carmen didn't order him to do anything, Scott massaged her feet of his own accord because he knew it was what she wanted. Soft relieved grunts echoed out every time he pressed against a particularly stiff muscle but it didn't take particularly long to relieve the tension in the giantess's powerful peds. Scott kept working though, the heady scent of her sweat almost intoxicating as he rubbed up against her.

He didn't even realize his lips were pressing against the warm flesh around him until Carmen let out an annoyed grunt and her controller clattered against the coffee table. “Stupid fucking,” she grumbled above and Scott pushed himself up against her right foot in an attempt to ease the sudden tension, “Oh, there's an outage in my area? Really...”

An aggravated sigh echoed across the apartment followed by a strange quizzical noise.

The couch shifted beneath Scott and he froze as Carmen's face loomed overhead. “Aw, don't stop, little guy,” her fingers ran down his back and pressed against his hips.

Scott yelped as he felt his stiffened member slide up against one of the wrinkles of her sole.

“I love how affectionate you're getting.”

“Th-thank you,” he stammered, his cheeks burning with embarrassment.

Her hand gently lifted him up and he swallowed a lump in his throat as she leaned back into her couch before setting him down onto her left breast. “I'm so glad I found you,” Carmen murmured, “If I hadn't, I'd still be working a job that I hated and living in that shithole... Ok, it's not the worst apartment I ever had but you know what I mean...”

Scott nodded along, shuddering as her fingers ran down his back and her nipple pushed against his belly. “If you hadn't taken me in,” he flushed again as her fingers pushed against his hips, forcing him to thrust into her tit, “I... I might not have survived.”

“Well,” she smirked, “It's a good thing I found you then, huh?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, his body continuing to push against her breast of its own volition.

“I think I'm gonna get a tattoo to commemorate it,” Carmen mused, “Something down on my foot, probably along the arch. Which one do you like more, little guy, left or right?”

“Right,” he moaned, the word coming out before he realized that he had even said it.

“Ok, right foot it is then,” her eyes rested on him as he continued to hump her tit.

The orgasm built inside of Scott and he looked up to see Carmen watching him, a lazy smile on her face. “I'm...” he panted, “I'm gonna... can I...”

Her chuckle rippled through his world, “Of course you can, little guy.”

His whole body arched when he came, his load almost instantly lost in the pattern of her shirt. He rolled over and fell down between her breasts, the buttons of her shirt came undone a moment later and he was suddenly resting on her warm olive skin. “Thank you, Carmen, thank you so much,” he breathed, kissing the fleshy hills on either side of him.

Her fingertip tousled his hair and her words reverberated through his tiny body, “I think I'm gonna order in for dinner tonight. What do you want, hm?”

Scott nuzzled against her fingertip and pulled it a little closer, “Whatever you want would be amazing, Carmen.”

“Pizza it is then,” she giggled.

His little stomach rumbled as he imagined tearing into a gooey hunk of pizza the size of his head and wondered what toppings the giant woman would get. The question flitted out of his head as soon as it entered while Scott snuggled against her.

He never needed to worry about making decisions like that ever again.

Scott was just a happy little pet.