I crouched deeper into the carpet until the fibers should obscure my body to anyone not looking directly down.  No one was here, so I had plenty of time to find the perfect place to hide.  The table leg to my right should give plenty of cover, and I doubted it would be inspected too closely.  It should give me the perfect view, too.  A few more minutes of waiting and my plan would pay off.

It was a little shocking my plan had gotten this far.  Getting shrunk had been expensive, but I felt comfortable selling everything and clearing out my savings since I would no longer have any expenses.  They also did not ask any questions when I told them to deliver me to my crush’s house, though of course I did not say that exactly.  I expected some questions when I told them to drop me through an open window, but people wanting to surprise their partners seemed relatively common.  All I had to do was wait for a hot day when she left a window open to do it and I got free, easy entry to her apartment.

Keys jingled on the other side of the door, and my heart skipped a beat.  It was time!  A key slid into the door, then the massive thing swung open with an ear-piercing squeal.  Loud booms accompanied each step as she entered, then she paused just inside the doorway.  She closed the door behind her and turned the deadbolt, then slid her high heels off.  With a groan she bent over to pick them up, letting each one dangle from a finger.  Her footfalls pounded the floor, every step accompanied by a small earthquake that got stronger the closer she got.  Just as one ended another began, and I was subjected to a constant cycle of seismic activity by my unknowing crush.

Dorothy had always towered over me, but this was on an entirely different level.  When her gorgeous blue eyes and long, straight straw-colored hair first caught my gaze from behind the reception desk, I made up a reason to go talk to her.  As the conversation continued, I came up with excuses so I could linger, watching her pink lips move while we engaged in playful, flirty banter.  After a while she had to leave, and when she finished rising from her chair I found myself looking at her stomach, her blouse a white wall before me.  Our eyes met when I looked up at her, and she seemed to stare into my soul.  “Are you gonna move, shorty, or do I have to step on you?” she asked with a dusky voice, and I quickly got out of her way.

Today, she was similarly dressed as she had been then and most other days, in standard business casual attire.  Her white blouse was tight, with her breasts straining the button over them a little, and her sleeves had been rolled up to her elbows.  A snug black pencil skirt outlined her broad thighs flaring out from her waist, and flesh-tone stockings made her long, shapely calves look even more chiseled.  She would have looked hot wearing a burlap sack, so she rocked the secretary look even without glasses.

Dorothy flopped onto the sofa with a deflated sigh, making a muffled crash as the cushion crumpled beneath her.  She was sitting right in front of me as I expected, unknowingly giving me the perfect opportunity to stare up at her.  Her shoes dropped to the floor with a clatter, then she raised her feet and extended her legs toward me.  Dorothy’s feet slammed down right in front of me, making the ground tremble and my bones shake from the crash.  I had misjudged how long her legs were and nearly gotten crushed, but I was closer to her than I had ever been.

She reached a hand into the purse resting against her thigh, then withdrew her phone.  The camera’s facial recognition feature unlocked it, then she began tapping at the screen with her thumbs and forefingers.  As she did this, she began idly kneading the floor with her toes, pressing the digits into the carpet and grinding the fibers down.  Her big toe was taller than me, so I was mesmerized as it wiggled, randomly rising and falling.  Each movement, no matter how small, made the nylon clinging to her skin move with it, distorting the grid of finely-stitched threads.  It was amazing to watch, and I wished my desk at work had been under hers.

Dorothy slouched while she messed with her phone, sinking into the sofa until I could no longer see her face past her knees.  She straightened her legs, sending her feet sliding toward me.  I did not want to risk giving myself away, but as I watched her feet flatten carpet fibers like a steamroller I knew I had to move.  However, I could not bear to tear my eyes away from them, so I backpedaled away as quickly as my legs would move.

Immediately it became apparent that, even if I were heedlessly sprinting away from her, I would not have been going fast enough.  I had only taken two steps when her foot subsumed me, the second toe knocking me onto my back.  Fortunately I was not crushed, though her foot pinned me with its sheer weight.  Nylon dragged against my face, scraping the top layer of skin as it slid over me, and the seam of her stocking gave me a firm shove before moving past.  As it continued, I realized I had never paid much attention to the fact that her shoes stretched the whole length of a floor tile.

When it finally stopped, I was under the edge of her arch, with the soft skin of her sole encompassing me.  She continued mashing her toes into the carpet, and I felt every slight muscle twitch as it passed through her foot.  When I was getting used to it, her foot lifted off me, and a cool wave of air hit me before it slapped back against the carpet.  My entire body stung from the blow, and it had not yet recovered when her foot raised again, only to crash back down.  Every time it hit me I worried this would be the time I got smashed, but she never pressed down hard enough.  After a half-dozen times, though, I worried that I would be turned to mush simply from being pummeled so hard.

Dorothy’s foot lifted off me, and I braced for an impact that never came.  Instead, her foot raised high and hung over me like a slanted roof while she spread and twiddled her toes in the air.  She picked up her heel, drawing my attention, and I knew that moving was no longer an option.  Her feet may not have flattened me, but I had no doubt her heel would if I were under it.  I turned and ran, jumping over carpet fibers like they were hurdles.  The sudden burst of activity drained me quickly, but when the ground trembled from her heels slamming down I knew I had made the right choice.

I turned back to her and saw that her foot had just fallen short of landing on me.  It was completely vertical, and as I stared up the curved sole it was clear that I had just missed getting smashed.  She idly scrunched and stretched her toes, and as I watched them, I realized just how massive her feet were.  If the office we worked in was built at my scale, her toes would extend past the roof (which made me doubt she would have worked there to begin with).

Her sole wrinkled and nylon bunched up when she flexed her foot, making the towering structure curve sharply.  The process reversed when she stretched it, making her skin and stocking taut.  Suddenly, her feet dropped to the side, lightly banging against the carpet before bouncing back to a more comfortable position.  I worried about getting spotted while her foot was down, but her heel was wide enough to block her view of me.  She brought her feet erect again, making a soft bang when they collided, then relaxed them.  Though her feet were the size of windmill blades, it felt like she was waving at something.

Dorothy pulled her feet toward her and placed them flat on the floor, sitting back up.  Her legs were so long that, when they were pulled in like this, her thighs sloped down from her knees.  She set her phone down and leaned forward, and I was very conscious of how exposed I was.  My crush almost bent in half while reaching down, then grabbed her foot and began massaging the sole with her thumb.  I simply watched her, staying perfectly still.

She froze in the middle of digging her thumb into her sole, and I looked up to see her staring directly at me.  I dared not move a muscle under her gaze, hoping she would write me off as a piece of lint among the carpet and move on.  The longer her eyes lingered on me, however, the less hopeful I became.  Dorothy knew something was off, and that whatever was on the floor did not belong there.  It felt like she was studying me, trying to figure out what I was before acting.

Her hands slapped the front of the sofa, and her biceps briefly bulged when she pushed herself forward.  She raised a foot and extended her leg as far as it could go while her body surged toward me.  In a flash it was almost on top of me, moving too quickly for me to react.  By luck alone it fell just short, smashing into the ground with devastating force.  The shockwave emanating from it made my legs buckle, and I fell to my knees.

There was no time to recover, and I forced myself to get back up.  Dorothy pointed her toes and extended her leg even further, pushing it toward me.  Unsteadily I ran away, knowing that getting dragged under her foot would end differently this time.  She swept her toes back and forth over the carpet, probing for me while I tried to put as much distance between us as I could.

Her foot retreated and she sat back on the couch, but I was nowhere near out of the woods.  She reached down and grabbed one of her shoes, holding the heel like a handle.  The whole room trembled when she dropped to her knees, causing me to stumble when it ran through my already weakened knees.  Dorothy’s tremendous body loomed large as she scanned the floor for me, shoe raised and ready to strike.

Despite my puny size, it did not take long for Dorothy to find me.  She crawled toward me on her knees, covering more ground each time her legs moved than I could in a minute and sending out small earthquakes every time they landed.  I ran in a zig-zag pattern, though I was not sure how much it would help me dodge.  Considering how large her feet were, a well-aimed strike would cover anywhere I could move.

A shadow fell over me when she leaned forward, and the ground rumbled when her palm set down.   I started running toward her hand, hoping I could throw her aim off and take cover among her fingers.  This was the fastest I had moved in my life, and if I slipped up it would be the fastest I would ever move.

Dorothy let out a loud grunt and swung her shoe at me, and I dove forward.  I landed right when her shoe did, and my desperate dive took me just out from under the toe of her shoe.  It made a terrifying clap even on the carpet, and the resulting shockwave made my legs feel like rubber.  They were so distressed that I could not even pull them beneath me, let alone stand on them for support.  Even though she had missed, I was done running.

Her cold blue eyes stayed locked on me, and she raised her shoe for another swing.  Desperately I burrowed into the carpet, hoping its fibers were long and thick enough to shield me from a direct strike.  Dorothy swatted at me with her shoe again, and this one was right on target.  The deep lines etched into the sole were centered around me, and it crashed into the carpet with a bang.

Dorothy’s attack did not smash me, but I was far from okay.  My bones felt like jelly, and there was a persistent ringing in my ears.  The overwhelming shock sent my body into panic, and I alternated between feverish and freezing, shaking and sweating no matter what temperature I felt.  Through it all, Dorothy’s eyes bore down on me, her harsh gaze unavoidable.  I wanted to play possum, but my body did not care what I wanted and continued shaking.

“What is that?” Dorothy wondered aloud after studying me for several seconds.  The volume of her voice cut through the ringing in my ears, and its powerful rumble was no less terrifying than her footfalls.  She leaned in for a closer inspection, her tremendous face dominating my view.  “I don’t think it’s a bug…”  Her face continued looming closer, and I shook even harder.

Finally, when her nose almost touched the carpet, her eyes widened and she pulled her head back up.  “You!” she boomed, her voice brimming with anger.  “What are you doing in my apartment?”  I tried to answer, but my brain was too scrambled to come up with a coherent thought.  “Is this why you quit last week?  You weren’t creeping on me enough at work, so you wanted to creep on me at home instead?  Yeah, that’s right, I could feel your eyes on me every day from the second I sat down, and it’s not a mystery why you spent twenty minutes out of every hour at my desk.  I’m not a fucking idiot, you know.”

“I can explain!” I managed to shout.  Begging for my life did not require much thought.

Either Dorothy could not hear me or chose to ignore me.  “I’m guessing, since you thought you were moving in, you sold all your stuff and didn’t get another job?”  I did not like where this was going.  “And you spend all your time obsessing over me, so you can’t have any friends.  None who’d miss you, at least.”  I did not like this one bit.  “I doubt anyone will even remember you exist after I clean your smashed guts out of my carpet.”  She reared her shoe back for a final strike.

“No, no!” I begged.  “Please, Dorothy, don’t kill me!  I’m so sorry, I’ll never bother you again, just please don’t kill me!”  My words fell on deaf ears, if at all.  Dorothy’s shoe was already racing down at an incredible speed.  When the sole eclipsed her face I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing it would be the last thing I saw.

Several moments passed without an impact, and I figured it must have been so sudden and immense that I did not feel it obliterate me.   I forced my eyes open, and saw Dorothy still looming over me.  She had tossed the shoe aside, and her intense glare was now accompanied by a smirk.

“I’ve got a better idea than just killing you,” Dorothy rumbled.  She dug a fingertip into the carpet beside me, then propped my back up with it.  Her thumb joined it, and she carefully pinched the back of my collar.  Much less carefully she yanked me out of the carpet hard enough to leave rugburns on my arms.  While I swung back and forth beneath her fingers she sat back on her heels and raised me to her face.

Eyes bigger than me focused inward, watching me helplessly dangle in her grasp.  “Hm, have you always this small?” Dorothy asked, then answered her own question.  “Yeah, you must have.  The first thing I remember about you was threatening to step on you if you didn’t stop your squeaky voice, and it wouldn’t make sense for me to say that to someone much bigger than you.  It’d make even less sense for you to make yourself smaller just so you could stalk me.”

Dorothy shook when she planted a foot on the ground, making me start swinging anew.  She slapped her free hand on her thigh and pushed herself up, and it felt like my stomach got left behind.   When she reached her full height, she batted me with her index finger hard enough that I nearly flew out of her fingers.  As she watched me move back and forth hanging by my collar Dorothy giggled, making a horrific growl come from her throat.

The world shifted when she began walking, and she continued pondering things out loud.  “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this months ago, you spent enough scurrying around my desk.  Maybe I just liked flicking you away too much, or it wasn’t obvious until it dropped in my lap.”  She struck me with her finger again, and I screeched while she laughed at me twirling.

We crossed the threshold into her kitchen, and my mind began to run wild wondering what she had planned.  I had invited her to lunch a couple times, and she might have thought it would be poetic justice to include me in her next meal.  There was no way she would eat me, though.  She was irritated with me, but she wasn’t a monster.

Was she?

Dorothy’s tongue slid out and moistened her lips when she reached past me to open a cabinet, and my trepidation grew.  Glass clinked together, and my mind jumped to what flavor of jam I would be joining.  My eyes flashed to the first sign of movement coming back out of morbid curiosity and to my surprise she had an empty jar in her hand.  Hardly encouraging, but at least I would not become part of her next sandwich.

“Oh yeah, this is perfect,” Dorothy purred, placing the opening below me.  Her fingers opened, and I fell into the jar.  I landed on my back, then slid along the glass floor when she raised it to her eyes.  The glass distorted her face, making it seem to wrap around me so she could gaze at me from opposite sides.  She slowly rotated her wrist, making my helpless body slide along the bottom while her laughter echoed inside the jar.

“Do you like it?” she asked, finally able to stifle her laughter.  Her voice made a cacophony erupt inside the glass, making her distorted voice even more difficult to understand as she walked back.  “I figure, since you like looking at me so much, why not let you?  This way you can always look at me from the safety of your jar without worrying about me stepping on you!  I can keep you on my coffee table here, and since you already spend so much time at my desk, I won’t even have to explain why you’re on it!  Maybe they’ll even pay you for your new position as my desk ornament.”

When she got back to the living room, Dorothy set my jar on the coffee table with a resounding thud.  As I gazed up at her towering over me from below her knees, I should have been ecstatic.  Something about it did not sit right, though.  Maybe it was because she was a colossus, or because I was trapped in a jar, my bug’s eye view of her was disappointing.

Dorothy leaned over far enough that her hands rested on her knees and her face filled the sky, her gleaming blue eyes accompanying a smug grin.  “I think I’m gonna like looking at you in there just as much as you like looking at me.  And remember; I’m giving you exactly what you’ve always wanted.”  Her mocking laughter filled the jar as she stood, seeming to revel in peering down at my puny form.

She fell back onto the sofa, kicking her legs into the air.  They crashed down beside my jar, making the whole table violently shake.  Dorothy crossed her legs at the ankles and picked her phone back up.  A huge grin was plastered on her face as she scrolled with her thumb, acting like I was not even there.  Apparently, it was simply enough for her to know I was trapped and helpless, and that she had won.

Dorothy danced a little in her seat, her mood much more upbeat than when she had first gotten home from work.  Her feet waved back and forth while she danced, knocking into the jar and pushing it a bit.  Although staring at the titanic Dorothy was unsettling, I could not bring myself to look away.  She had given me more than I could have ever asked for.