My mind raced as I considered what to do. Fulda was a monster as a senior in high school and often shrunk people just for the joy of stepping on them. Odds were pretty good that if she saw me, she would smash me without a second thought. However, I knew that sooner or later I would have to be discovered by somebody or I would certainly die of thirst or starvation. Moreover, she may be my last chance to get discovered. If she left without finding me, I would be at the mercy of the entire student body when they came back, or whichever janitor buffed the floors. She at least knew about tiny people and was the only person in the world aside from me who did.
I pushed aside the extreme likelihood that I would be squashed and made my decision. “Hey!” I shouted, hoping she would be able to hear me. “Hey, down here! Between your feet!” I ran toward the toes of her shoes, hoping I could get into her line of sight. “Please, Fulda, help me! I’m tiny and I don’t know where else to turn!” It was lame, but I had no idea how else to get her attention.
I reached the white tips of her gigantic Converse and looked up, hoping she was looking for me, but saw no sign she had heard me. Desperate, I began jumping up and down and waving my arms, shouting, “Come on, please look down! I’m a tiny person, you have to help me!” Despite my movements and shouting, Fulda reacted by opening her locker. She pulled out a couple of large books and rested them against her forearm, then slammed the door shut with a clang. I was no closer to getting noticed by her than I was with Alyssa.
An ear-piercing ding rang out, and Fulda reached behind herself to grab her phone. When she moved it in front of her so she could read it, I was still hopping and waving in hopes that she would spot me. She looked down at her phone beside her waist, then her eyes darted over to me. I kept moving to keep her attention while she slid the phone back into her back pocket, and her cold blue eyes remained locked on me. I had definitely gotten her attention. The only question was whether that was a good thing.
“Hello there, puny man,” Fulda boomed, smirking. “Tell you what: since I’ve already accounted for the three people I shrank this week – two by stomping, one by swallowing – I’ll give you a fighting chance. Start running.” She leaned her head back in a horrifying cackle, and I started running. It took almost a minute to pass the crest of her toe, and another minute to make any meaningful progress. The “fighting chance” she gave me was just another opportunity for her to have fun.
Sure enough, before I could even reach the next tile a wall of white slammed down in front of me, a distinctive black stripe cutting through it at eye level. The ground trembled from the impact of her foot, and I stumbled forward to fall against the hard rubber of her sole. Thinking quickly, I shoved off from the shoe and turned around, spotting her other shoe in the far distance. She had not even needed to adjust her stance to block my escape with her titanic foot.
Even if it was hopeless, I still needed to put on a good show. I ran toward her other shoe, feeling Fulda’s cold gaze on me the whole time. She waited patiently while I adjusted to move around her shoe even though it took a couple minutes to reach it. Glancing up, I saw she still had a smirk on her face, like watching me try to escape was something that brought her joy. When I passed the rounded tip of her shoe I started sprinting, hoping to throw her off.
No matter what I did I knew I could not escape Fulda, and she made that clear. One tile later her foot slammed into the ground in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. Before I could push off her foot flicked to the side, lifting my body off the ground and throwing me through the air. I landed some distance away and slid over the tile until I finally came to a stop almost perfectly between her feet.
Fulda spread her feet further, bringing her watchful gaze closer to me, until not even the corners of her shoes could keep her standing. She slid the rest of the way down, making a dull thud when her pelvis landed on the floor. Once she was seated, Fulda gazed down at me and chuckled softly. “I know most people think of me as a volleyball player, but I’m also a cheerleader,” she said, explaining how she did the splits out of nowhere. With her long legs extended for hundreds of feet to either side, it was clear I could never have escaped her once I got her attention. “And you’re coming home with the head cheerleader, if you can believe your luck.”
Fulda’s open hand descended toward me, and I was no longer able to even entertain the idea of looking for an escape. I looked up at her hand as it grew in my view, quickly eclipsing everything except her palm. It set down on top of me, knocking me to the ground, then her fingers slid in behind me. With her fingers firmly pinning me against her hand Fulda stood back up, her rise gradual enough that I barely noticed it. However, I still noticed the extreme heat coming from her hand, and enormous pressure from her fingers holding me in place.
Once she was standing again, Fulda opened her fist to allow me to gaze up at her. She was looking down at me as well, a curious expression on her face. “I’m not sure where you came from,” she began, “but you’ve picked a most auspicious time to come by. I was worried I wouldn’t have a tiny man to smash this weekend, but you’ve resolved that issue quite handily.”
I was too shocked to reply before Fulda reached her BMW and her fingers curled around me again. Just what role had the older Fulda dropped me into, anyway? There were hundreds of people she had smashed this year, and I could have been any of them. However, I did not think that she had made me one of her random shrinks. She kept meticulous track of all the people she shrank, and I was not one of them. There must be something else going on behind the scenes that my memories had simply not unlocked yet that would tell me why I was tiny and why Fulda had no immediate memory of shrinking me.
The drive to Fulda’s house was startlingly calm, with her doing her best not to move the hand holding me. Once she stopped, however, the movement began again, with her hand swaying with each step she took. I realized that everything she did, from the ease with which she drove to looking for her keys, was not for my benefit, but so she would not lose me. Once we were inside her mansion her hand flattened and she began walking toward her cavernous dining room.
When we reached the dining table, Fulda set her hand atop it and tilted, causing me to slide out of her palm and onto the hard wood surface. “I know you can’t go anywhere, but don’t go anywhere,” she said, pulling her hand away. “It would be a tragedy if I stepped on you without knowing.” While that was far from reassuring, I had no choice but to watch Fulda as she walked toward the burnished steel refrigerator.
As Fulda considered the refrigerator’s contents, the front door opened and two gigantic blonds entered the house. While they were both gargantuan, the taller one was wearing all black, while the shorter one wore blue jeans with a metal band t-shirt. I immediately recognized them as Gina and Jessica, Fulda’s sisters who were even more cruel toward tiny people than their oldest sister. They were not supposed to know about tiny people or shrinking yet, though. Maybe they would overlook me because of that?
They tossed their bags aside once they were in the door and started walking toward the kitchen. I watched all of their steps with a vested interest, because my life depended on it. When they reached the dining room table Fulda closed the refrigerator door, a bottle of water in her hand, and started walking back toward me. However, her two sisters were standing around me, and I did my best to go unnoticed. No matter how still I stood, however, Gina’s eyes still found me, though I was not sure if she realized what she had spotted.
Gina raised a hand toward me, fingers closed together, as though she knew what she was doing. It hung in the air for a moment before racing down, the vast expanse of her palm primed to smash me. There was nothing I could do as her hand came toward me on a trajectory to obliterate me. I had been worried about Fulda smashing me, but it turned out Gina would get the honors after all.
Skin slapped against skin, and I looked up to see Gina’s palm hovering mere inches above me with Fulda’s hand wrapped around her wrist. “Not this one,” Fulda declared. “He’s mine.”
Gina tried to shake her wrist free from Fulda’s grip but found that her older sister was strong enough to hold her. “What are you talking about?” she protested, still staring at me with her deep blue eyes. “Is your mind so far gone that you’ve bonded with a bug?”
“That’s… not a bug,” Fulda reluctantly admitted. “It’s a person.”
“Wow!” Gina leaned in so she could get a better look at me. As her gigantic, astonished face filled my vision, I took a step back, but it made no difference. Her eyes were still locked on me, and I helplessly gazed up at her tremendous features. “I knew I was getting tall with this growth spurt, but I didn’t think I was getting so big people looked like bugs!” With less than an inch between me and her mouth, the wind from her voice staggered me and blew my hair back. “But then, shouldn’t you two look about that size to me, too? Are you also growing?”
“I wish,” Fulda replied, chuckling. “He’s a tiny person!”
“Right, a tiny person,” Jessica interjected sarcastically. “You’ve got a rich imagination. No one is that small, someone would’ve stepped on them by now. Why don’t you just tell us what’s so special about this bug that Gina can’t squish it?”
“No really, he’s a person!” Fulda insisted. Throughout all of this Gina kept a close, watchful gaze on me, studying every aspect of me. She must have realized by now that I’m a person, but was keeping silent. “Go on, say something!”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Gina’s tongue snaked out of her mouth and along her upper lip, leaving a thin trail of saliva on the pink flesh. She audibly gulped, and I watched the lump move down her throat. Throughout the whole thing, she never took her eyes off me, like it was a threat.
“Say something or I’ll let these two loose on you.”
Gina’s lips spread into a smile, and I resolved not to give her the satisfaction of smashing me. Not yet, at least. Warm air blasted me from her nose and my heart raced, but I had to say something. “Uh, hi,” I managed, and my voice cracked. I just hoped it was enough.
Gina’s mouth opened wide and loud, bellowing laughter rushed forward from it. It hit me with such force that I was thrown back several inches and landed on my butt. If that had not been enough she began slapping the table, making loud pounding sounds while the table violently shook from her strikes. “His voice!” she called out, still making the ground beneath me tremble. “It’s so high-pitched and tiny!” I chose to look on the bright side and be glad she had heard me.
“See? Now do you believe me?” Fulda asked.
“I’m not convinced,” Jessica said. “That could’ve just been a bug sound.” Her hand lunged toward me, and with Fulda still restraining Gina’s arm she could not react fast enough to stop it. Jessica’s hand engulfed me and slid my body along the table until I contacted the heel of her palm. With a fingertip holding me in place she lifted me off the table, fast enough to make me feel like my insides stayed behind. Mercifully, the ascent was over an instant, and my mind quickly caught up to me.
Jessica’s fingers unfurled, and I was confronted with another gigantic face. Her expertly plucked eyebrows were the same straw color as her hair, and she had the same light blue eyes as Fulda. A long, aquiline nose rested perfectly between them, and her plump lips were wide enough to easily consume me. She had a square, dimpled chin and clear skin, with a healthy glow from frequent physical activity outside. Right now, my main concerns were the eyes half my height looking right at me and the mouth that I could be inside without any notice.
A simple greeting would not be enough to satisfy her. “Hey, put me back!” I shouted. “I’m Fulda’s, not yours!” It felt wrong that I was already claiming to be Fulda’s property, but it just slipped out.
Jessica’s reaction was much more subdued than Gina’s just a slight smirk upon hearing my voice. “Okay, you’ve convinced me, tiny person,” she admitted. “That just raises the question, though, of how you got so tiny. Did you, like, shrink him, Fulda?”
“Shrink him?” Fulda repeated, stifling a laugh. “Now who’s got a rich imagination? Of course I didn’t shrink him, he’s just a tiny guy!” I was always impressed by Fulda’s ability to deceive someone without lying, even though I had given it to her.
“I’ll just have to ask him about that,” Jessica replied, still cradling me in her palm. “He said something else interesting, apparently he’s yours? Is he your boyfriend?”
Gina audibly gasped and stood, tearing her arm out of Fulda’s grip. “Fulda’s got a boyfriend?” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, and her boyfriend’s so puny I mistook him for a bug!”
“Wow, he must be pretty small! I bet she could step on him without even knowing!”
“I bet she could swallow him!”
“Fulda’s gonna sit on her boyfriend’s lap and crush him!”
“Guys, knock it off!” Fulda interjected. “He is not my boyfriend!”
“Uh-huh.” Jessica sounded unconvinced. “Tell me, have you two fooled around yet, or are you worried you’ll lose him in there?”
“Give him to me!” Fulda growled, lunging for me, but Jessica closed her fist and pulled me away. My head reeled from the sudden movement, but it stopped just as quickly as it started.
“I’ll give him back, I just want to see something first.” I felt the descent like I was on a very fast elevator, then the world turned over as Jessica rotated her hand. “He’s so small he probably hasn’t gone back to back with anyone for years!” Jessica’s fingers opened, depositing me on the floor. To one side, I saw the gargantuan Gina towering over me, her black suede flats alone dwarfing me. On the other was the gigantic Jessica, the white lining around the sole of her blue hi-top All Stars much taller than I was. While I got back to my feet they stood so their backs were to me, as though they were going to compare their heights to someone who did not even come up to their ankles.
“Hey Gina,” Jessica began, “how tall did you say you were?”
“Six-five when I got measured this morning,” the titaness answered, “but I’ve been having quite the growth spurt recently, so I might be six-six already. I’m not taller than Fulda yet though, so I haven’t quite reached six-eight, but I’m sure I will soon.”
“Yes, we all remember the one time that doctor said you’d be seven feet tall,” Fulda butted in.
“How about you Jess, how tall are you?” Gina asked, ignoring her oldest sister.
“I dunno, like six-three?” the other giantess answered. “And I did notice that you were taller than me other day! I just didn’t want to say anything..”
“And how tall would you estimate Fulda’s little boyfriend here is?”
“An inch if he’s lucky,” Jessica replied. “He’s so puny, if I moved my foot back a little bit right now I would squash him. He doesn’t even reach the top of my shoes!”
“I know, right?” Gina added. “If Fulda weren’t watching, I could smash him by accident. I bet I could even swallow him without trouble! Definitely an inch at best.”
“Fulda, does your boyfriend live in a glass, or are you worried that you’ll drink him?”
“And do you want us to set out some glue traps in case he tries to get away?”
“Okay, that’s enough.” I was probably the only person, real or fiction, to have ever been glad to have Fulda’s humongous Converse swing into view and slam down close enough for me to be shaken by the impact of her foot. “Yes, he’s very small,” she said, establishing her presence between them. “And whether or not he’s my boyfriend, he’s still mine, so lay off.” Her hand swept in toward me, lifting me off the floor when the pad of her middle finger struck me. She pressed me into her palm then stood, confident that I was secured inside her fist. With me in hand, Fulda started toward the stairs while her sisters groaned in disappointment.
“Come on, we were just having fun!” Gina complained
“Yeah, we’re just messing with him because he’s so small!” Jessica added. “Your boyfriend was never in any real danger!”
“Well, you’ve lost tiny man privileges!” Fulda called back to them, and I heard the distinctive thud of her huge foot landing on the first step. “You’ll never see him again if I have anything to say about it!” I hoped that was not another example of Fulda deftly lying by telling a truncated version of the truth.
For someone who took steps three at a time, Fulda held me surprisingly steady as she made her way up the stairs. I was surprised when the muffled sound of a door opening reached me through her fist, and I soon heard it slam shut behind her. The force of two thudding steps reached me in her hand, then the world was thrown into tumult, joined by the sound of a dozen springs compressing under great weight. While I tried to get my bearings, the giant fist holding me lowered until it found stability on Fulda’s abs.
Her fingers opened, and I fell a short distance onto her stomach. It was surprisingly comfortable for something so solid, and the fresh white cotton tank top felt good on my skin. Lying prone on her abs, I looked up across the vast expanse of space to the rounded ridge of her breasts and her face looming high over them. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a French braid, and her icy eyes were looking at me like I was the only thing in the room. A straight nose fit perfectly on her lightly-freckled face, and her pink glossed lips reflected the room’s light.
“Now that we have some privacy from those hellions, I have some questions for you myself,” Fulda boomed, and her voice rumbling through her body felt amazing as it hit my body. “How did you know my name when you first saw me, and why are you tiny?”
So she had heard me! As I searched for an answer that would make sense, I found a memory of the character I was inhabiting that should satisfy both answers, which I expressed to her. “Fulda, I was in class with you for like ten years,” I began. “I was the short guy in class, you were the tall girl, but we weirdly got along pretty well. You liked to stand beside me and show off how tall you were getting, at least, which I guess is a form of getting along. Then, one day I started shrinking. No one knew why, but I was losing an inch or two a day – about as fast as you were growing then, if I remember. My parents pulled me out of school when I was around two feet tall, but I kept getting smaller, like it was a reverse growth spurt. I wanted a normal life though, and a normal school, so when I turned eighteen I got emancipated and convinced the district to let me come back. It may not have been the best decision, everything considered, but I don’t regret it.”
As she listened to my story, an embarrassed smile spread across Fulda’s face. She tried to suppress it by biting her lip, but the longer it went on the bigger her smile was, and she could no longer hide it. “So, don’t get mad,” she said. “I kind of learned how to shrink people our freshman year and may – may have – used you as a guinea pig for my ability to shrink people over time. I was disappointed when you got pulled from class, since I wanted to see how small you’d get without any additional effort on my part. But now I guess we can see that, and you got really small!”
“Yeah, I sure did.” My character probably should have been mad at her for that, but I knew that was not how it happened for me. If I told her the truth, I would just sound crazy. There was no way she would believe that she was living in a story within a story, being modified by her, and a version of herself from further along the storyline had shrunk me and deposited me into the story for her to find, so I left it at my character’s explanation.
“You know, I figured you’d be angrier about this,” Fulda said, and the feeling of her body vibrating against mine from her voice felt fantastic. “I think you like it. I think you like really tall women and want a woman to really tower over you. I think you always wanted to be bug-sized in comparison to me and just didn’t want to say it.” She waited a moment for her words to sink in before continuing, “Yeah, I remember you looking up at me in awe when I was like two feet taller than you. Why else would you have sought me out instead of anyone else in school?”
She was right, of course, or I would not have created her in the first place, but I could not let her know that. “You were just the closest person to me at the end of the day,” I deflected. “They made me a special, tiny locker just below yours. I tried to get someone else’s attention, but they didn’t hear me!”
“And yet I could. Funny, since I’m much taller than most of the other people at school.” Fulda’s hand snuck in from the side and grabbed the back collar of my shirt, then plucked me off her abs. “Don’t worry, tiny man who likes gigantic women. Your secret is safe with me.” Fulda leaned forward, pushing me back as her spine lifted off the headboard, and seized the lace of one of her shoes. With a loud pop she slid the shoe off her foot, then grabbed it in one hand. “And I’ll be the last person who ever hears it.”
This was not going well for me. Fulda sat up and brought the empty shoe toward her, then held me over the opening for her foot. Her fingers opened, dropping me into her shoe, and I landed in the middle of a giant blue C printed on her insole. I looked up through the tunnel of white canvas to see her smirking down at me, barely able to contain her laughter.
Fulda leaned forward, lowering the shoe to the floor. She kept it remarkably steady, making sure I did not slide down to the toes, and set it down gently on the carpet. Her hand let go, and she sat upright so she could look straight down at me. “I’ve crushed hundreds of tiny people this year alone,” she started, “but I think you’ll be the most satisfying. “Not only are you the longest burn, but it’s so rare I get to feel someone actually get squished under my foot. Most of them are under my shoe, and it’s just not as satisfying.”
Before I could protest, her enormous socked foot appeared in the hole above me. The thin cotton fibers strained to contain her huge foot and had even more trouble when she flexed her toes above me. She tapped the opening of her shoe a couple times, making the whole structure shake from the impact, then pointed her toes downward so they would start sliding in.
“Poor, tiny man,” she said as her foot entered her shoe above me. “Always tiny, even before I shrank you.” Her gigantic foot pressed further into the shoe, and I began to hear canvas straining to contain it. “And now I finally get to step on you. How fitting that you tried so hard to get back into class with me, and I’m the one who’s going to step on you.” Her foot was almost entirely the shoe now, with just her heel hanging above me. “I remember you being smart, but I guess that doesn’t mean you have good ideas.”
Fulda worked a pair of fingers in behind her heel, pulling back the canvas of her shoe. Just one more thrust of her heel now and I would be little more than a stain spread across the bottom of her sock. “It was pretty funny watching my sisters have fun with you, though.” Canvas strained again as her heel lowered into the shoe, drawing closer toward smashing me. “They think it’s funny how small you are, and I think it’s hilarious.” Her heel encroached further, and the cotton fibers from her sock tickled my face. “Weirdly enough, you seem to enjoy being tiny, unlike most of the other people I shrink.” Fulda’s foot held still though it was only millimeters from crushing me. “It might be funny to keep you around for a while and see what happens. Three giantesses in one house and a single tiny man. We can play so many games with you until one of us unceremoniously squashes you.”
She began to withdraw her foot, and I heard the canvas return to its normal form in its absence. When it was fully removed, I could see her beaming down at me as she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. With a sudden lunge she reached down and seized the shoe with a hand, rolling me back against the heel when she picked it up. When it stopped, she tilted it to the side, and I saw a vast plain of peach through the hole for her foot. Fulda tilted her shoe until it was upside down to deposit me into her palm, then tossed the shoe onto the ground with a thud.
Fulda looked down at me, resting her chin on a finger as she considered what to do. “But what is your role in all this?” she asked. “A tiny man that I haven’t squished is a rare thing indeed.” She ran the finger along her jawline and began thinking out loud. “You’d be useless as a slave – you can lift, what, a gram or two? – and I don’t like the idea of you as a pet, either.”
While she paused to think further, I decided to interject. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
Fulda laughed. It was a loud, cruel laugh that shook my bones and covered me in a cloud of hot, moist air. “I’m not about to start taking suggestions from people I can swallow whole. You don’t get a vote. I own you. You’re my property.” A loud crack rang out when she snapped her fingers. “That’s it! You’re my toy! My plaything!” She took a moment to inhale deeply and a big, radiant smile spread across her face. “I can use you however I feel, in whatever game I want, whenever I feel like it. I can even break you if the mood strikes me. And there’s not a single thing you can do about it.”
The manic glee in her eyes as she detailed the arrangement unnerved me. This was twice now I had effectively become the property of one of my creations, and this version of Fulda seemed even happier about it despite not knowing the depth of her achievement. “Is there any — “
“Did I pull your fucking string?” Fulda demanded, interrupting me. I stared at her blankly, so she continued. “Then why do I hear you talking?” The short, staccato words in her booming voice made her even more imposing, and I silently gazed up at her in complete terror. “You will only speak to me when I allow it, and there will be no doubt about the few times that is. Do you understand?” Scared to talk out of turn again I simply nodded, and she glowered down at me. “Well? Answer me!”
“Yes, Fulda!” I yelped.
“Good.” She glanced from me to the floor just beyond her bed’s footboard and grinned. “Now, it’s time to play with my new toy.”