I gently pushed the door open and slipped through it, ducking to avoid banging my head against the frame. Crouching lower, I crept across the room to the desk where my shrunken man-pet lived, hoping to get the drop on him. As a seven-foot tower of a woman, it was difficult to keep the floor from creaking under my over two hundred pounds of muscle. Through absolute control of my perfect body and long, slow steps, however, I made it several steps without a single sound.
Though he was too puny to see from the doorway, I spied my favorite shrink standing in the open atop the desk. I had no idea what he did while I was out – long for me to come back? Probably. For the past few weeks, in preparation for just this moment, I had been keeping odd hours, changing up my schedule, and keeping him in the dark about the passage of time. If I had played my cards right, by now he should have no idea what time or day it was, and ought to expect me to be gone for a full day of classes even though it was Saturday.
My shadow engulfed the human dust mite, and he spun around in shock. His body went rigid, and he craned his neck back to look up at me. I smiled as terror gripped him, freezing him in place and giving him a fear boner. Before he could come to his senses, I raised a hand to my shoulder and pressed all my fingers together, making my intentions clear. Tiny squeaks came from my desk, only audible because of the absolute silence in the Gamma house, and I brought my hand down on top of him in a devastating slap.
SPLAT
His body flattened under my palm, spreading in a wet, gooey mess. I pressed my hand down harder and twisted it, mashing him even further while chuckling at my absolute dominance over him. He was nothing compared to me, and I reminded him of that every time smashed him, looked down at him, or even stood in front of him. It had only taken a couple weeks to completely turn the tables, and now he was completely under my control. While he might deny it, I knew this arrangement suited both of us best.
I lifted my hand and got ready to mock him once he regained his form, but there was no trace of him on the desk. A small wet spot remained in my palm, so I turned it over to investigate. There, in the middle of a dark red spot, was his smashed body. He did not look like most shrinks did after getting crushed – this was more like a cartoon character had an anvil fall on them. With all the tinkering I had been doing to reality lately, I might have caused a delay to his reconstitution, or turned it off entirely.
As much as the idea of a squished yet fully conscious shrink amused me, I did not have time to wait for him to come back. Unlike shrinks, big people like me had things to do. I brushed my hand against my shorts, scraping the tiny, disgusting mess onto the black fabric, and walked over to my bed. Grabbing my phone from the nightstand, I headed back out the door to head downstairs. Saturdays meant a party for the Gammas.
I recovered while Fulda was in mid-stride, the most inopportune time. With the moisture gone I came unstuck from Fulda’s shorts and began plummeting toward the carpet. Thinking quickly, I dragged my fingers along the rough fabric until my arms snagged on the ridge of rolled-up material at the bottom. The sudden arrest of my fall hurt, wrenching my shoulders in their sockets, but it was less painful than hitting the ground. Immediately I began kicking my feet against her leg, trying to scramble up and take refuge in the narrow bastion of cotton.
It was not to be. Before I could make any progress Fulda’s heel hit the ground, sending a powerful tremor up the length of her leg. My feet slipped of the rough interior fabric, leaving me hanging from the ledge, then her toes swung down. Another wave of vibrations surged up her leg and the only thing to absorb it was my fingers. The power of her step sapped the strength from them, and one hand completely slipped away. I was left tenuously dangling from her shorts by one arm, and she did not look to be stopping soon.
While her other leg moved forward I hoped to regain my hold, but it was not to be. It would take longer than a second for strength to return to my arms, and there were subtle motions in her gait that were impossible to notice for someone not attached to her leg. When it straightened and began moving forward again, I knew I had to act fast. As her foot reached its apex, I made one more lunge to grasp her shorts with my free hand, but it was too weak to grab anything. As her shoe descended toward the floor, the only thing keeping me on her leg was four enervated fingers.
Fulda seemed to miss the floor – it was worse than I expected. Her foot slammed onto the step, and the jolt from the sudden stop wrenched my fingers free of her shorts. The tiny bit of forward momentum carried me toward the front of her leg, and as I plummeted along the smooth surface my course changed to drop me on top of her shoe. I landed among the tightly-stitched white cotton of her laces, the knot tied in them keeping me from tumbling down the rest of her shoe. A black and white streak raced past, followed by a calamitous boom and a teeth-rattling earthquake.
Before I could burrow beneath Fulda’s shoelaces, the foot I was resting on began moving. Her heel kicked up, flinging me into the air, and my weakened fingers slipped away when I tried to snag a thread. Airborne, I flipped head over heels away from her, flailing wildly as I tumbled toward the ground. Due to the stairs’ incline, what would have normally been a six-inch drop was now a dozen feet with nothing to slow me on the way down.
I crashed into the hard wood of the Gamma house hallway and slid several inches on my back. The landing hurt, and I would definitely be feeling it for several days, but luckily nothing was broken. However, while I could move my extremities, I was not yet strong enough to stand back up. As I looked up at my titanic creator and captor lumbering down the stairs toward me, I realized my predicament was only getting worse.
The thud of Fulda’s feet on each step was like a countdown, getting louder and more intense the closer she got to the bottom. I tried to get out of her path, but each time I tried to get my feet beneath me they simply slid away, unable to support my weight. Trapped in place, I was forced to watch as she inexorably drew closer one step at a time.
Fulda reached the bottom of the stairs, and with her last step a gargantuan Converse was directly over me. “Fulda, wait!” I cried out, though I knew she could not hear me. The brown rubber sole sped toward me, quickly blocking everything from my view except a single diamond etched into the rubber. Her foot landed directly atop me, and I felt intense pressure as my body was squished beneath several hundred tons of woman.
For once, Fulda’s foot did not linger. In time with the rest of her gait, Fulda’s foot lifted off the ground, and I found myself stuck to the sole of her shoe. Wind ripped at me as her foot moved through the air, finally peeling me off once her foot reached its apex. I fell back to the floor, rolling when I landed, and my body recovered just in time to absorb the shockwave from her foot hitting the ground. At least this time I was not beneath it.
Fulda disappeared around a corner, and I finally had some time to gather my strength and consider my options. My first priority, of course, was getting Fulda to notice me again. She may be cruel and capricious, but she at least regarded me as a pet while the other Gammas thought of me as a plaything. Escape from the sorority house was impossible: I knew for a fact that only one person had managed it before, and that was due to someone who no longer lived here. Besides, I was not going to pass up a chance to live at the feet of my ideal woman.
I finally felt strong enough to get back to my feet, just in time for a series of increasingly powerful earthquakes to wrack my body. Turning towards the source, I saw Fulda’s ginormous feet trudging toward me, slapping the kitchen tile each time her toes slammed down. Remembering my primary goal, I began jumping up and down while waving my arms and shouting in a desperate bid to get her attention. My eyes gazed up her gargantuan body, and to my dismay I saw the fingers of one hand curled around a red Solo cup, the others around her phone, her eyes intensely focused on the latter. Even though she was almost on top of me, there was no way she would notice me.
A tremor drew my attention back to my level, and I was met by a vast sprawl of brown rubber as her shoe stretched dozens of feet into the air. I braced myself to be squashed again, but her foot fell just short of landing on me, making my knees falter from being so close to a ruinous earthquake. My balance gone, I fell against the white rubber toe of her Converse, and heard the canvas wrinkling as she got ready to take another step. Unable to separate myself from the gigantic shoe, I was carried into the air along with it when she lifted it to take a step.
My body formed around the curved surface, the movement itself pressing me against the rubber. The whole world was a blur while her shoe moved, and I turned my focus to her laces to keep from getting dizzy. It helped a little, but did not lessen the gut punch when her heel slammed onto the carpet below me. Her toes swung down, slapping the rest of her sole against the carpet, and I was dislodged from the front of her shoe. Thankfully I was spared the impact of another earthquake, though that was hardly a blessing as I bounced and rolled along the carpet.
Fulda stepped over me, completely oblivious to my presence, and walked toward the huge armchair at the end of the coffee table. I was right back where I had been just a few seconds ago. Her footfalls had turned my knees to rubber again, and it would be even more difficult to get my footing back on carpet. With all I had written about it, I knew how difficult it would be to traverse carpet if I had to push my way through the fibers. If that were not bad enough, it would be even harder to get Fulda’s attention while technically inside the floor.
While I waited for the strength to move again, I turned my attention toward Fulda. She sank into the chair, her long legs actually tilting upwards despite her rigid back, and I knew this was as comfortable as she got. The phone looked like a toy in her hand as her thumb raced across the screen, her fingers curling around the top. Fulda hit send on whatever message she was typing out, then set the phone down in her lap. Seconds later, doors began opening upstairs, and my situation somehow became even worse. Lying helpless at the main entrance into the living room, I would be unable to get out of the way of the gigantic feet coming my way.
I tried forcing myself to stand in hopes my legs would be able to bear the weight, but I simply toppled onto my back again. Thundering footfalls down the stairs signified the approach of several gigantic women, and I knew I was stuck. The first of them reached the ground floor, sending out a shockwave that carried through the carpet and got absorbed by my body, resetting whatever tiny amount of recovery I had made. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a house-sized white hi-top Converse plant itself on the hard wood floor while its partner swung into the kitchen, the harbinger of what was to come.
A veritable parade of gargantuan feet followed, filing into the kitchen so the giantesses could make drinks before joining the party. My legs still useless, I resorted to one final desperate measure to avoid being trampled repeatedly. “Fulda, help me!” I cried out, hoping against all likelihood she could hear me. “I’m on the floor by the doorway! Please, come get me before the other Gammas crush me!” Nothing. The titanic redhead simply leaned back in her chair and took a long sip of her drink before looking back to her phone.
Seismic shockwaves grew in intensity, and I knew the troupe of titanesses was coming back my way. First up was the towering blond Helen, second only to Fulda in physique. In some ways she had taken definite fashion cues from Fulda, favoring Converse sneakers and outfits which revealed as much of her powerful body as possible. She favored white instead of black, however, and had taken to wearing cut-off acid washed denim skirts since her confrontation with me. All those thoughts went out the window, however, when her brown rubber sole streaked into position over me, and all I could think about was the likelihood of it coming down on top of me.
Fortunately, she stepped right over me, her heel landing just past my feet, resulting in a seismic event of unthinkable ferocity when the rest of her foot swung down. Just because she had missed me did not mean I was in the clear, however. After Helen came another monolithic blond and Fulda’s younger sister, Jessica. Aside from the hair color, she was the spitting image of her sister. As a middle child she craved attention, and my gaze was subconsciously drawn toward her dark blue dress as it surged toward me one long stride at a time. When I could see her thighs moving, I completely expected to be underneath her shoe with the next step.
Again, by sheer chance she missed me. The floor trembled under the weight of her shoe slapping down, and for a moment all I could see was the white rubber toe of her Converse, but it had fallen just short. When her tremendous blue shoe stepped over me I saw that next in line to unknowingly threaten me was Jackie, the pastel princess. From her pink hair to her light blue silk dress, she seemed intent to give the impression that she was a gigantic piece of candy. Her white stockings were just a few shades lighter than her skin, and she was so skinny the nylon gave her legs the little definition they had. As her black flats surged toward me, however, I knew that her weight relative to normal-sized people hardly mattered. If one ended up atop me, I would be smashed flat as surely as any insect.
Jackie’s shiny black flat landed beside me, generating a quake that made my bones shake in my joints but thankfully leaving me unsquished. As she passed over me, I saw the last long-term Gamma step over the threshold. Though she was Chinese, Li knew that many Americans could not tell the difference, and habitually dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl to attract hapless victims. Out of all the Gammas, she was undoubtedly the cruelest, and sought to inflict the most fear and suffering on her victims before she devoured them. As her gigantic brown loafers came toward me, I hoped that she of all people would walk by me without incident.
Though I was ostensibly trapped in my own fantasy, very few of my wishes came true. The ground shuddered when her foot set down, and the vast smooth black platform of her heel stretched above me, the rest of her sole reaching far into the distance above my head. “Li, no!” I shouted, and it was all I could manage before her foot came crashing down. Her heel set down atop me, almost measured so I was in the exact middle, and my body compressed beneath her immense weight. The intense pressure crushed my body flat, and I even heard the visceral crunch when my bones gave way beneath her heel.
When Li took her next step, I was still stuck to her shoe. Though my body recovered quickly it did not drop free, and the force of her foot itself descending kept me pinned firmly against her shoe. Even when it hit the ground again I was not knocked free, instead subjected to a rapid descent when her heel forced me back to the ground. Li squished me again with each step, subjecting me to a cycle of smashing and recovery that was only broken when she finally came to a stop with her foot firmly pressing down on me.
Several minutes passed while Li’s heel kept me flattened while gigantic muffled voices came at me from every direction. The solid material of her sole dissipated the sound enough that I could not understand a word by the time it reached me, but I was very aware of a conversation going on around me. With each second that passed, another bit of conversation passed me by, and I wished Li would kick her feet up for a moment. While I wanted some relief from being perpetually flattened, I was also interested in what they were talking about.
At last, Li’s heel lifted, freeing me from the prison beneath her foot. For a moment my body lingered on her sole, stuck there by inertia and the collection of whatever came out of me when I was smashed. Finally, however, her heel lingered in the air long enough for me to drop away from it and land amid the carpet fibers. Desperately I crawled away, hoping to get clear of her foot before she brought it back down again, always conscious that I was a split second away from getting squashed again.
“You know, I’m not really sure what to make of it,” came a terrifyingly deep voice from above. I owed my freedom to Li’s unconscious movements while speaking, it seemed, and I desperately clawed my way through the carpet so as to not squander the opportunity. She twisted her toes against the carpet and I crawled faster, not wanting to wind up beneath her heel again. “I’ve never gotten a C before!”
“Have you considered making her shrink-sized until she reconsiders the grade?” asked someone out of view. I was not very familiar with their voices at this size, but I was pretty sure it was Jessica who asked that question.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Li answered, knocking me prone when her voice struck me. “It seems a little extreme for this case though, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s not like I’m failing or anything. Besides, shrinking women takes so much more effort I’m not sure it’s worth it.”
“No, you’re right,” replied a soft, sympathetic voice in the distance, which I could only imagine was Jackie. I capitalized on the brief reprieve to continue my escape from beneath Li’s shoe in hopes I could avoid getting stepped on for the near future. “It was just a first draft, so you should be able to rewrite it for full credit. Just include a couple more sources and have me proofread it, and you’re guaranteed to get an A.” A beat passed while I gripped a carpet fiber with both hands and pulled myself toward it and she added, “Besides, you’re right. Shrinking other women just isn’t worth it, no mater how old and shriveled they are.”
“Yeah, okay!” The tremendous rumbling of Li’s voice was only topped by her setting her heel down, though it landed just behind me. It may have been by sheer luck, but I had avoided getting smashed by Li again. “Are you sure you don’t mind, though? It’s, like, 20 pages, and they’re all fairly technical.”
“Don’t worry about it!” Jackie responded. “First of all, your paper was supposed to be 15 pages from what you told me, so there has to be something there to cut. Second of all, you used a lot of tables, right? I’m sure that we can at least collapse them to make them fit in the format. And lastly, we need you as a Gamma, and didn’t your parents say they’d stop paying your dues if you went below a B in any class?”
“Yeah, you should listen to her.” Was that Helen admitting some slight point of weakness? “She brought me from a D to a B in my freshman year, so she should be able to do better now. Plus, we’re all Gammas, right? You can trust us over some rando at the writing center.”
Li’s heel ground against the floor, and I heard carpet crunching beneath her weight. While they conspired to improve her grades I was fighting for my life. With great difficulty I turned myself around using only my arms, then gripped the corner of her sole with my hands. With a surge of strength I pulled myself up until I stood leaning against her shoe, the least I could manage in the face of a series of giantesses. Getting Fulda’s attention was impossible, but I could not remain on the floor. No matter how unlikely it was, one of them might notice my desperate attempts to get noticed.
“Hey, Li!” I shouted, waving one arm desperately to generate interest. “I’m down here, by your shoe! Come down and get me!” I got the same response I expected. The brown leather of Li’s shoe alone was several dozen feet tall, presenting me with a tremendous obstacle to even reach her ankle. From there, her tight black socks clung tightly to her skin, giving her calves an unbelievable amount of definition until they reached her knees several hundred feet above me. From there, it was a brief view of her bare, smooth skin to her plaid, pleated skirt draped over her legs like a tent. As I looked up her white linen shirt toward her dark eyes, she showed absolutely no signs she had heard me, ignoring me entirely to focus on her sorority sisters.
The conversation continued, with none of the gigantic women acknowledging my presence at Li’s heel. “Yeah, I’ll send it to you tomorrow,” Li said as I swung one leg onto the low ridge created by her sole. “You’re sure you don’t mind, though? It’ll be a lot of work and might eat up your entire today.” I reflected on how appropriate her words were as I dragged myself onto her shoe so I could stand on the black rubber ledge.
“Really, don’t worry about it!” Jackie replied as I inched my way over to the nearest seam in Li’s shoes. “What’s the point of being in a sorority if you can’t ask your sisters for help every now and then? If you really feel that it’s a burden, though, you can think of it as a favor you can pay back later. I’m sure I can think of something you can do for me.” I grabbed the exterior stitching on Li’s loafer and prepared myself for my ascent up the great brown wall.
“This isn’t going to be like when you made us play D&D for a whole night because you walked on a treadmill for an hour, is it?” Weird; I had not written that story yet, but Li already knew what happened. There was no time to reflect on that now, however. My arms started shaking under my own weight, and I scrambled to reach the top of Li’s shoe.
“Come on, you can admit you had fun!” Jackie countered. “At the very least, you got to eat a shrink.” I leaned against Li’s ankle, taking a moment to gather my strength while they bantered far above me. “I’ll think of some way you can repay me, and I promise that it won’t involve anything nerdy. Is that fair?” My long climb up Li’s sock had begun, and I could not care less about their negotiations while I was draped over her ankle bone.
“As long as I can decide what’s too nerdy, fine,” Li agreed, and I continued my way up her calf. “Maybe it’ll depend on what grade you get me.”
“For a favor from you,” Jackie paused to chuckle, “I’ll change your grade on the server if I have to.” My inverse climb along Li’s calf was starting to take its toll on me. During my time as Fulda’s prisoner, I had gotten ample practice with climbing, but this was different. The tight knit black sock should have been easier to climb than Fulda’s smoothly shaven skin, but my strength had been sapped by a continuous series of earthquakes generated by these tremendous women. At this rate, it would be a wonder if I made it to her knee.
Li’s calf suddenly twitched when her skin reflexively registered of my presence. The black obelisk I clung to rotated slightly, throwing my feet into the air, and I desperately clenched my grip to maintain my hold. I looked up to see if I had been caught, and beyond the great expanse of Li’s svelte thigh I saw her face, with two black eyes staring down at me. The moment she noticed me, her body tilted to the side, and her arm started swinging toward me. With her long fingers outstretched, it was a certainty Li was going to swat me like a fly.
Her hand stopped just short of impacting me, and I was spared the humiliation of being smushed like a common bug a second time in an hour. Li’s fingers slowly moved away, but before I could be thankful for the intercession, I saw her eyes widen. She recognized me, or at least what I was. I was not sure whether it would be better for her to mistake me for a common shrink, or to recognize me as the inexplicably tiny person who had created her.
Without saying a word, she curled her index finger back and placed it flat against her sock, pressing slightly into her muscle. Li smirked cruelly, and I had just enough time to register the expression before her finger swept down. It struck me and immediately overwhelmed what little strength I had left, tearing my fingers from amid the threads of her sock. Between gravity and the force of her flick it was a quick trip to the ground, and I ended up slightly embedded in the carpet.
Li turned to face me head-on, the vast black sole of her shoe swinging over me and striking the ground hard enough to create a new tremor. Her movements were enough to attract the attention of the other giantesses, who quickly recognized a helpless shrink lying on the ground. They moved to circle around me, and their footfalls subjected me to a never-ending series of quakes that leeched what little strength I had left. With one last glance I looked at Fulda, who was still firmly engrossed in her phone and drink. If she had truly become omniscient in this universe, she had willingly made herself ignorant of my struggles.
With four titanesses gazing down at me, I felt even smaller and more pathetic than usual. I had created their universe, and now they were mine. Unable to do anything else, I stared up at them, and found I had to focus on each of them in turn. Helen looked stern, her face a mask of steel while she peered down at me, while Jackie grinned broadly, her toes twitching while she imagined me beneath them. Jessica clearly had to suppress a laugh when she looked at me, still finding my size funny, and Li set her hands on her hips. As she looked at me with her predatory gaze, I remembered her desire to finally chase a shrink around with her feet. It was only fitting, I supposed, for me to be that shrink.
My legs were too weak for me to stand on them, but I soon realized I did not just feel smaller. The quartet of giantesses was growing, which most likely meant I was getting smaller. My whole body laid out was small enough to fit atop a single carpet fiber, making my inability to escape irrelevant. Each fiber making up the carpet was its own platform now, and I would have to leap between them if I wanted to get anywhere.
Despite my minuscule size, Li did not lose track of me. She raised her right leg until her thigh was parallel to the ground, bringing her ginormous foot directly over me. It lingered there for a moment, building trepidation, while I realized the foot alone was over a thousand feet long. Even at this distance, every small divot in its pitted surface was visible. Li was a skyscraper all her own, and the others were just waiting for their chance.
Li’s shoe raced down, closing the distance to me in an instant. I was astounded by its speed; it had moved several thousand feet faster than I could blink. Aside from my surprise, however, there was time for little else before Li’s foot squashed me into nothing. As soon as she relented, I knew, the others would have their chance to stomp on me as well, and I accepted that my lot for now was to be repeatedly stepped on.
I hit save on the document and leaned back in my chair with a self-satisfied smile. If he had been a god, then I was a goddess, with absolute control over the universe in which I lived. Not only could I make him do whatever I wanted, but I could make anyone in the world do whatever I wanted to him. My so-called god was weak and powerless, and I had supplanted him. The only thing keeping me from truly messing with reality was my concern for the consequences – namely, that someone might catch on.
I looked toward the tiny house my pet god lived in. It seemed appropriate – he was a god who lived in a house the size of my thumb at the beck and call of a much more powerful goddess. As I left things, he was consigned to get stepped on by my sorority sisters until I felt the need to intervene. Since he had created us to step on or eat people, I felt it was an appropriate way for him to spend some time.
I sure would miss him, though. It may have been the conditioning he gave me, but there was something about shrinks I found irresistible. Besides, why should I let other people step on him when I could? After all, I had promised him that our squisher-squishee relationship was exclusive, and as a burgeoning goddess I needed to honor my word. With a thought I willed him back into the puny house, freeing him from being smashed by Li until I made her get bored of it.
My view changed from the bottom of Li’s sole to the dark interior of my house. A quick glance around confirmed I was my normal height, just under an inch tall. Was that my normal height? That was how tall I had been for quite some time, and it felt familiar to me. I took a couple seconds to think about it. If I was Fulda’s pet, as indeed I was, it only made sense for me to be this size.
The vast, cold blue field of Fulda’s iris appeared in my window, and her pupil narrowed when she focused on me. Her eye crackled with electricity as bolts of lightning arced across the void of her pupil. “Hello there, my pet shrink!” she boomed. Her voice seemed even louder and more powerful than usual. Just the sound of it made my knees go weak, and it seemed to come from all around me. “Are you ready to see one more thing I can do?” As her most devoted servant and companion, there was nothing I wanted more.