Fulda dropped the last shrink into the shoe box, ignoring his high-pitched squeal, and set the lid on top. She tapped it a few times, both to make sure it was secure and to frighten the tiny people inside. A thin layer of cardboard was all it took to stop their puny voices from getting outside, a fact which never ceased to amaze her. When she picked the box up, she purposefully tilted it to the side to mess with its inhabitants. A series of thuds was faintly visible through the cardboard, and Fulda hoped none of them had died. That would be a waste of shrinks.
When Fulda learned her sister, Jessica, was attending the same college, it was a foregone conclusion she would be joining Gamma Tau Sigma. She was a legacy, she already knew how to shrink people, and most importantly she was nearly Fulda’s height. However, she would have to get out of whatever habits she had developed and learn how the Gammas did things. Fulda always though the best way to learn was by doing, so she had taken twenty from that night’s haul as training aids. With luck, once they were gone Jessica would be dealing with shrinks like a veteran.
Fulda’s black lo-top Converse, massive even to people who were not shrunken, slapped the carpet while her long, powerful legs took the steps three at a time. Her black shorts had some red stains on the seat from earlier, and her large hands held the shoe box against her white tank top for stability. There was a gleam in her cold blue eyes while she ascended the stairs, and her auburn French braid bounced with the rhythm of her steps. At the top, she went to her room, where Jessica should be waiting for an unspecified surprise.
Jessica was sitting at the foot of Fulda’s bed, one long leg crossed over the other while looking at her phone. When Fulda entered, she turned and smiled politely, showing off her blue fingernail polish. She swung one blue hi-top Converse in the air while the other rested on the ground, and her blue dress fit her form well while showing off her lean muscles. Her straight, straw-colored hair swayed when she moved her head, and her clear blue eyes had an intensity not even Fulda’s could match. At the start of the night, someone had told her she was overdoing it with the blue, but Jessica emphasized the importance of coordination.
“What’s in the box?” she asked, and the bed springs squealed when she stood.
“Shrinks,” Fulda answered. They sounded similar, but Jessica had cultivated a touch of sweetness to her voice. “We’re going to go through this whole box tonight so you can see the many ways of killing shrinks and try them out yourself.” She walked toward her desk and dropped the box on it, making a dull thud when it landed.
“Oh, I already know those,” Jessica replied while walking to join her sister. “I’ve been crushing tinies for years, after all.”
“Shrinks,” Fulda corrected her. “The fact that you call them ‘tinies’ tells me you have a lot to learn about how the Gammas do things. People talk about their shrink all the time, but if you talk about your tiny you’ll raise some eyebrows.” Jessica nodded, and Fulda slipped the lid off the box. She moved slowly to build anticipation for the people trapped inside and set the lid to the side once it popped off.
Jessica eagerly reached into the box, but Fulda grabbed her wrist to stop her. “Not just yet,” she said, gently lowering her hand back to her side. She stared into the box, hands on her hips, slowly shifting her gaze from one person to the next. “Staring at them like this for a bit helps build fear and tension. It gives time for them to realize how pathetic they are. Ordinarily I’d give a little speech to that effect, but I think they know what’s up by this point. Besides, a good menacing speech only comes with practice.”
Fulda stared at the box of shrinks for about ten seconds, smirking at how puny they were. Jessica followed along, even trying to copy the expression though she could not quite manage it. Their shadows fully engulfed the box, and the longer Jessica did it the more she understood why. She felt immensely more powerful doing this as opposed to simply smashing several at a time, and after a bit they even started backing away from the giantesses.
“Now we take one, and only one, each,” Fulda instructed. She reached in and grabbed a shrink between her thumb and forefinger, and Jessica followed suit. “Follow what I do to the best of your ability, and don’t jump the gun.” Jessica nodded and looked at Fulda inquisitively, wondering what she was going to learn from this.
Fulda held him around waist-level for a second, then opened her fingers and dropped him. He landed on his back by the toe of Fulda’s toe, easy to spot amid the white carpet. She brought her shoe forward and let it linger over him a moment, then began rotating it on her heel. Her foot moved further each time but kept the same rate, thumping against the carpet after some time. Finally, she brought her foot back to where it started and pressed her sole down, smashing him with an audible crunch.
“Now you try it,” Fulda encouraged Jessica. “Remember that the goal is to cause the most fear you can before crushing him.”
Jessica released her grip, and the shrink landed amid her laces. Before he could grab on she sharply raised her heel, sending him tumbling down the shoe’s length and over the rubber toe to land on the carpet. She moved her foot over him the same way Fulda had, and began waving it over him like she was brandishing a weapon. However, instead of just touching the floor with her shoe, she took some extra time to lift her heel and grind her shoe into the carpet beside him. When she was ready, she lifted her foot over him and stomped it to the ground hard enough that the sound drowned out the crunch, then ground her shoe back and forth to eviscerate what was left.
“Nice flourish,” Fulda congratulated her while they reached in for another. “See? A little bit of instruction goes a long way.” Jessica blushed at the compliment, and Fulda proceeded with the lesson.
“This next one’s a little more difficult, but it’s very satisfying.” She flung her shrink across the room, then started walking after him. Her huge feet slapped loudly against the carpet with each step, and Fulda helpfully explained why. “When doing this, forget about grace. The louder and heavier your footsteps are, the more scared they’ll be of you.” A tiny figure started moving in the carpet away from Fulda, though it was not moving nearly fast enough. Fulda’s Converse overtook him, and she raised her sole to display the puny, flattened corpse on it.
Jessica threw her shrink much harder, and he collided with Fulda’s butt before dropping to the ground. She took carefully measured steps, doing her best to swat the floor with her shoe each time it landed by imagining there was a tiny person waiting for her at every footfall. The shrink started to run, throwing off Jessica’s estimates, but by then it was too late. With a sense of finality she brought her shoe down, completely pulverizing his body.
While they returned to her desk, Fulda gave some feedback. “That’s supposed to simulate walking across the room to squash a shrink after you spot him from afar,” she began. “Keep in mind, though, that if you ever do throw a shrink, hitting another Gamma with it is a guarantee that you’ll lose it. No practicing Gamma would pass that up.” Jessica nodded along, hanging on Fulda’s every word.
“Pull up a chair, but don’t sit in it yet.” Jessica could see where this was going and dutifully grabbed a chair from the other side of the room, then dragged it to where they were standing. They withdrew another pair of shrinks, then Fulda turned and set hers in the seat of her chair.
“Go ahead and put yours down too, he’s not going anywhere.” Jessica was skeptical they would simply stay put but did as her sister said.
“Usually I like to play with them, shove them around a little bit before sitting on them,” Fulda remarked. “I’ll forego that this time though.” Fulda started slowly sitting down, waving her butt back and forth while lowering it. At several points she stood back up and began over again, going a little lower before standing. Just before sitting down she moved her butt in a circle over the shrink, then plopped her weight down at once, flattening him. “The key to this one is a good tease.”
“I know how to sit on a shrink,” Jessica said. “I sat on that tiny boyfriend of yours once.”
“And as far as I know he’s still alive, so you didn’t do a very good job.” Jessica rolled her eyes but held her tongue. This was not the time for that discussion.
She started easing into the seat, wiggling her rear in the same way Fulda had. Jessica moved slower though, even with how she moved her butt, and leaned into it more with her hips. Instead of standing at several points she sat down continuously, stopping when she felt the outline of the shrink on one of her butt cheeks. He started squirming and trying to push her off, but his puny arms could not even budge her tremendous weight. When his desperate movements started to slow Jessica relaxed, dropping her full weight to crush him.
Fulda reached forward and grabbed the shoe box with one hand, then dragged it off the desk. She purposefully tilted it so the shrinks would all slide to one edge, then dropped it on the carpet to scatter them again. “Take off your right shoe,” Fulda instructed, and began untying her left one. Jessica followed along, and both of their feet made a loud pop when they pulled off their shoes.
After they set their shoes on the ground, Fulda lifted her socked foot and held it over the open shoe box. She began circling it around the box’s edge, then pointed her toes downward and lowered her shoe into the box. Just before making contact with a shrink, however, she stopped the descent and withdrew it, stomping it on the floor next to her shoe.
Jessica went about this menacing in her own way. She tapped the box with the side of her foot a couple times before holding it over the shrinks in the box, slowly rotating it around her ankle. Her no-show socks hugged the curves of her sole and toes even better than Fulda’s ankle sock, and she wanted to emphasize its sheer size to them. After several rotations, she kept her foot flat while lowering it into the box, catching the majority of shrinks beneath her sole. Slowly she kept moving until she felt them against her soft skin and kept driving down until they were pressed against the floor. At the last minute she relented, withdrawing her foot without smashing them, and set her foot down beside her shoe.
The two leaned forward and plucked another pair of shrinks out of the box, then Fulda grabbed her empty shoe and brought it to her lap. “Normally, I’d hold him up to my face for a bit before doing this,” she explained, “but I’m just trying to make sure you’ve got the fundamentals.”
“Like, you just stare at them?”
“Sometimes,” Fulda answered. “Usually I say something to mock them, but you don’t have to. Letting them see your face up close is a good way to drive home how gigantic you are to them, a lot of them lock up when they see an eye half their size or a mouth that can engulf them. What you say comes down to style though, and you get it through practice.”
Jessica figured she would give it a shot and raised her shrink to her face, staring stoically at it while Fulda dropped hers in her shoe. Fulda picked it back up and gazed at the shrink through the hole, and his tiny body started trembling. He ran toward the toe of her shoe, and Fulda carefully lowered it to the floor. She slipped her foot in and felt him get overwhelmed by her advancing toes, dragging him back to her sole. Her fingers pulled it over her heel and felt the shrink squirming against her massive foot, though he had nowhere to go. The shrink struggled while she leisurely tied her shoe again, and she relished the feeling. Once she had enough, she raised her foot a little and brought it down again, squashing him inside her shoe.
“Do you hear a weird squeaking sound?” Jessica asked, her head cocked to the side while she stared at her shrink.
“Aw, he’s screaming!” Fulda answered. “Don’t worry about that, they all do it, they just have to be close to your face for you to hear it. If you listen real closely, you might even hear them begging for their lives.”
“Oh. Cool!” Jessica let her shrink go just inside the top of her shoe, letting him drop the several inches to her insole. Through the long canvas tube for her ankle she watched him get up and scramble out of view, hoping to save his life. She lowered her shoe toward the floor, tilting it toward the heel so he slid back into it, then began sliding her foot in. When her toes and the ball of her foot touched her insole she tilted it forward, making the shrink slide into them. Her large foot made the canvas creak as it filled more of her shoe, and she fiddled with the angle until the shrink came to a rest right on the edge of her heel. While he thrashed against Jessica’s foot she pulled the laces tight, and a warm liquid spread against her sock from the squished body. Not giving it a second thought, Jessica tied her shoe tightly.
The sisters went back for two more shrinks, and without explaining anything Fulda set hers on her thigh, just below the bottom of her shorts. She held him in place with her finger while crossing her other leg over, moving slowly so he could see what was coming. Once her thigh was at rest, she slipped her finger out so the shrink was trapped between her legs. The shrink felt like he was in an oven, and desperately clawed at Fulda’s skin to get out. With a single flex of her legs, however, Fulda squeezed the life out of him, and his body burst between her thighs.
“What if I don’t want a strange shrink between my legs?” Jessica asked, considering her tiny person carefully.
“Why not?” Fulda responded. “It’s not like you’re shoving him in your panties. Besides, if they’ve gotten this far they’ve been trying way too hard to get there. Think of it as poetic justice. Plus, it feels really good.”
“I’m just not comfortable with it.”
Fulda sighed. “Fine. How do you feel about having them on your thighs, are you okay with that?” Jessica nodded. “Okay. I’ll make this a quick one, that shrink of yours might start getting too hopeful.” Fulda reached into the box and grabbed another shrink, then set it on her leg next to the remains from the previous one. She held her hand above him, fingers extended and together, letting it loom over him like a great wall of flesh. After a few seconds, she reared her hand back and slapped it against her thigh, crushing him into paste.
Jessica set hers down on her thigh as well and shoved him over with the tip of a finger before lifting her hand. She situated her hand similar to Fulda’s, making sure her fingers were together before moving forward. The shrink stood in awe of the great engine of destruction above him, and Jessica reared her hand back before striking. Her palm landed on the shrink, and she had to grind it against her skin to make him stop twitching.
“You’re supposed to swat them like bugs when you do that,” Fulda said. “That’s basically what they are to us, and swatting them like that is a good way to remind ourselves of that.”
“Okay, I’ll do better next time.”
“Don’t sweat it, you’re still learning the right way.” They withdrew two more shrinks, and Fulda added, “I think this one will be more to your liking anyway.”
Fulda set the shrink in her other palm and stared at him smugly while he screamed at her in his incomprehensible voice. Her fingers began to curl inward, and he looked around him in panic while they closed toward him. The tips of her fingers hooked over his body, and as they continued they pressed him against the top of her palm, holding him tight. She squeezed, making a fist around him, and felt his bones pop all at once.
“Hey, I think I know this one,” Jessica said, gazing down at the shrink in her palm. His yelling was frequently broken up by three syllables, and she thought they might be her name.
“Do you like him?”
“Eh, not really.” The yelling became more frantic, sounding more like desperate screaming.
“Good. Word of advice: when you get a boyfriend, don’t bring him to Gamma parties. Even if you want to shrink him, even if he wants to be shrunk, do it on your own and don’t tell them. It’s too dangerous, and you can’t protect him. The other girls think it’s funny to smash tiny boyfriends, and if you’re lucky they don’t wait until you’re looking.”
“Did that happen to you?” Jessica’s shrink was still yelling for help, but she had tuned him out by now.
“I was usually the one who did it.” Jessica turned away from Fulda’s smirk and began making a fist. The shrink’s screaming was incoherent now, but she maintained a stony face while her fingers overwhelmed him. He tried futilely to fight them off, but she had more strength in the tip of a finger than he did in his whole body and he got pinned against her palm. She clenched, and with a series of rapid pops he was reduced to a broken mess.
With the shoe box becoming less crowded, the remaining shrinks had more room to move. When Fulda and Jessica reached for another pair they scattered, running from the gigantic hands trying to grab them. More practiced in chasing down disobedient tiny people, Fulda caught hers easily, pinching him as she had the others. Jessica, however, had rarely needed to pursue them, and clumsily grabbed where he had been. She chased him into the corner, and after a bit of maneuvering concluded she could not pry him out with her short fingernails.
“Let me help you out,” Fulda said, and kicked the box with the side of her shoe. It slid over the carpet, and when it bumped into Jessica’s foot the abrupt stop threw its inhabitants against the walls. They fell onto the cardboard floor, and Jessica was easily able to grab hers between thumb and forefinger. She pulled him out, then looked to Fulda for guidance.
Fulda held her free hand flat and open so she could set the shrink down in her palm. She held him just below her face, smirking confidently while reveling in how much control she had over him. Jessica followed suit and found the feeling of extreme power surge through her. Before this, she had never taken the time to appreciate how big looking down at a tiny person made her feel, or how strong she was to them. The shrinks screamed incoherently during this, as though they were yet to figure out what was happening, which only added to her sense of extreme superiority.
Fulda’s head shot forward, her mouth opening while it moved. Her lips closed around the tiny man in her hand, and when she raised her head back up his feet were poking out from between her lips. With the tip of a finger Fulda popped him in the rest of the way, then slammed him against the roof of her mouth. She formed her tongue around him, dragging him against the ridges of her palate while sucking on him. He dropped into her frenulum when she released him, and Fulda dropped her tongue onto him, spreading it wide to hold him there. After playing with him, Fulda’s tongue flicked him onto her gullet, and she swallowed him whole.
Jessica liked what she saw and scarfed her shrink up, sealing him inside her mouth with a single movement. He fell against the inside of her teeth, and she struck him repeatedly with the tip of her tongue. She mashed it against his body, pushing him against her incisors while he weakly tried to push it away. Her tongue moved to the side, dragging him against her teeth until he reached her molars. One last hit knocked him onto her gullet, and she gulped him down.
The sisters reached back for two more shrinks, and after seeing the futility of trying to escape these were much easier to catch. Again Fulda put hers in her wide, open palm, and spent several seconds merely staring at him, making him feel small. Jessica got the same rush of power as she followed suit, and hoped she would get to eat this one, too. Something about having a tiny man in her mouth made her feel truly unstoppable, and his pathetic struggle against her throat muscles felt amazing.
Fulda pinched her shrink by the leg and raised him as far above her head as she could, then looked straight up. “A lot of new girls make a mistake with this one,” she said, lowering him toward her mouth. “The key is to keep your mouth closed until your elbow’s at a 90 degree angle. Shrinks may be stupid, but they’re not oblivious. They know where they’re going, and the sudden reveal almost makes them shit themselves. It’s one of the few times I listen to their pathetic begging.”
Even though she had spoiled it by talking, Fulda still got the desired reaction when she opened her mouth. The shrink began crying, pleading for her not to eat him, while she fought a smile so her mouth would stay wide open. When he passed between her lips, he tried to grab them to stop his descent, but Fulda simply opened her jaw a little more and he lost his grip. She carefully placed him on her tongue and closed her lips around her fingers, then let go. He slid down the length of her slick tongue and Fulda reflexively swallowed, forcing him down into her stomach.
Jessica delicately grabbed her shrink’s foot, nearly wrenching his leg out of its socket when she turned him upside down. She lifted her long, slender arm as far as it would go, then tilted her head back so she could look at him. As she lowered him toward her mouth, she laughed to herself over how tiny and pitiful the minuscule man was. He was dangling helplessly from her fingers and there was nothing he could do about it, while she held his very life in her hands. Soon, she knew, that life would be in her stomach.
When she opened her mouth a small laugh escaped from it, and that seemed to heighten his fear. Jessica listened closely to his screams, but could only hear the occasional word between his miserable sobbing. She brought him to the edge of her lips, waiting for him to try some pathetic ploy or bargain to save himself, but he seemed beyond any attempt at self-preservation. Her fingers released him, dropping him into her open mouth, and he tumbled along her rough, wet tongue. He landed on her gullet and Jessica immediately gulped him down, relishing the feeling of him traveling down her throat.
The shrinks were watching them in stunned silence, making the sisters easy targets when they went back for more. “I’ve already shown you the basics,” Fulda began, “so I’ll show you something fun.” She balanced the shrink on the tip of her index finger and grinned. “If you keep developing your shrinking power, I mean really work at it, one day you’ll be able to do this.” Fulda focused on the shrink, and Jessica watched with amazement as the shrink got even smaller. He rapidly diminished to half his size and kept getting smaller, becoming a mere speck on Fulda’s finger in a second. Fulda kept shrinking him and he slipped between the whorls of her fingerprint, but she did not stop there. Her focus remained on him for several more seconds until she broke it, making him smaller the whole time.
Fulda reached onto her desk and grabbed a magnifying glass. She held it over her finger where the shrink had stood and smiled, seeing nothing but a magnified image of her finger. “Check it out, sis,” she implored, and held the magnifying glass to Jessica. Curious, she took it and looked at the same area Fulda had been, inspecting it carefully from a variety of angles, and gasped. There was no sign of a shrink anywhere on Fulda’s finger.
“Amazing,” Jessica said, placing the magnifying glass back on the desk. “How small did you make him?”
“I like to think I shrank him right out of existence,” Fulda answered, “and practically, that’s what may as well have happened. Realistically, though, if some bacteria on my skin didn’t get him he’s about the size of an atom’s nucleus. He can’t breathe, of course, since the molecules that make up our atmosphere are several times his size and he can’t inhale them. Still, imagine what he sees before he suffocates. We’re about the size of a galaxy to him, each, and with nothing limiting his vision he can see all of us at once.”
Jessica leaned forward so her right eye was right over the tip of Fulda’s finger. She looked at it for a moment, imagining what it would be like for someone to look at the sky and see nothing but her iris and pupil stretching for millions of miles in every direction. “Bon voyage, little shrink!” she called out, and sat back up.
“Go ahead and show me what you’ve learned with your last one,” Fulda said. Jessica looked at her quizzically, so she elaborated, “Dispose of that last shrink in whatever way you want. It can be what you think will be fun, what you enjoy the most, or just an idea you’ve had for a while but never got to try. But remember, the goal is to scare them as much as possible before getting rid of them.”
Jessica considered the shrink between her fingers, rubbing her broad chin with her free hand while she thought over all of Fulda’s advice. He was going into her mouth, that was a sure thing: if she could have a steady diet of shrink snacks, she would. The only question was how to get him in there in a way she had not already tried. She also wanted to do something sudden. Her favorite part out of all of this was the sheer panic opening her mouth caused when she was lowering a shrink into it, and she wanted something that could come close.
Finally, she had an idea. Jessica gave a bashful wave to the shrink and began moving him toward her mouth, keeping her jaw tightly shut. She pressed him against her soft lips and puckered her lips, giving him a gigantic kiss before pulling him away. After staring at him for a few seconds with the best love-struck expression she could manage, Jessica pressed him to her lips again, giving him another long kiss with her enormous lips. When she pulled him away, she gave him another shy wave while looking at him tenderly.
The third time Jessica brought the shrink to her lips, she parted them just enough to let him through. He shrieked when he realized what was happening, and she slipped him inside her mouth, closing her lips around his body so his legs stuck out from between them. She tightened her lips, slurping him the rest of the way into her mouth and onto her tongue.
Jessica felt the shrink stand on her tongue and start stumbling around, like he was trying to escape. When he started running for her lips she curled her tongue back, making him run off the edge and onto her frenulum. In that moment, she felt more powerful than she ever had before: not only was there a tiny man inside her mouth, but he was feebly struggling against her tongue with no chance of success. She set her tongue down on him and flattened it, trapping him beneath it. His weak attempts to push it off only drove him deeper into the soft tissue, and Jessica’s rush got even stronger.
Thinking he might be on the verge of suffocating, Jessica lifted her tongue from the shrink and slid it under him. She slammed him against the roof of her mouth, holding him there securely before dragging him along the ridges of her palate. Her tongue curled around him, and saliva flowed back and forth with its movements while she sucked on him like a cough drop. When it felt like he had no struggle left in him, she tilted her head back and let him fall onto the opening of her throat. Jessica eagerly swallowed him and followed the lump with her hand as it moved down her throat.
“You like eating them, huh?” Fulda remarked. “I’ll see about hooking you up with Li for some pointers.” They turned their attention to the final shrink remaining in the shoe box, staring at him intently. The sisters did their best to seem dispassionate while looming over him, looking directly downward. “There’s still the matter of this last shrink, though.”
“Why don’t you take him,” Jessica suggested. As they spoke, their eyes did not move from the one remaining shrink, who got increasingly nervous under their gaze. “I don’t want to spoil my appetite.”
“I could always go for a shrink to crush.” He fell to his knees and broke down crying. “I’ve got a better idea, though. Why don’t you take him for the road? Think of him as a practice shrink. You’ve got a great grip on how to crush and eat them, but you need to work on your presence as a giantess. How you act, hold yourself, even how and what you say all contribute to that. They need to know they’re screwed within a second of seeing you.”
“Thanks!” Jessica said, reaching into the box to grab him. “My first college shrink.” He did not try to flee as her fingers approached, and she effortlessly pinched him between her thumb and forefinger. She held him to her face and grinned mischievously as she stood.
“You can also just kill him if you want,” Fulda added. “He’s your shrink, after all.” She winked, and Jessica began walking to the door.
“Oh, one more thing,” Fulda called after her. “I’m not saying that you’ll do this, but if you get caught mutilating shrinks on purpose you’re out, not even I can save you. So no pulling off their limbs for fun, no dissecting them, no partially digesting them and puking them back up, none of that shit. We all agree that it’s vile and we won’t stand for it.”
“We just killed a score of them,” Jessica said. “You emphasized the goal is to scare them half to death on the way. Am I supposed to believe you’re all against torturing shrinks?”
“Torture’s one thing, mutilation’s another,” Fulda replied. “It may take us a while to kill them, but we kill them cleanly. There aren’t many limits on what you can do with shrinks. You can squish them, eat them, make them do menial tasks for you, use them for blood sport, shove them around, hell, you can even fall in love with one if you’re so inclined. But we draw a hard line at mutilating them.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” When she turned back to her shrink, Jessica dropped the cordial attitude she had for her sister and adopted a stone-faced gaze with harsh eyes. She gave him a hard shove with the tip of her finger, then slipped him into her palm. Her hand closed around him in a fist and she lowered it to her side, letting him bounce around in the open cavity. While she walked she swung her arms in an exaggerated fashion, throwing him about wildly. Jessica was going to love being a Gamma.