Note: The name Hatice is pronounced Hateese.

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*The sun is lowering and the shadows are long. A few streets away at the local hospital a young nurse, Jaqueline, stands at the reception desk. Her posture is perfectly straight and her palms lie flat on the desk in front of her.*

She patiently greets entering visitors and invites them to sit in the waiting area with a genuine smile and a slow, graceful gesture of her hand. Her long, restless toes separate and scrunch within the confines of her leather, water-resistant nurse shoes. They are fantastic for work and easy to wipe off during her nursing duties but they also do not breathe well and prevent any moisture escaping the crowded, slick interior.

With two fingers Jaqueline pulls a pencil up and out of her stationary cup and inserts and twists it into her pencil sharpener to ensure that it is perfectly sharp. Occasionally, she corrects a spelling or numerical mistake with a novelty eraser gripped tightly in her fingertips, rubbing it backwards and forewards over the page to remove the graphite.

The eraser is well worn, pale and vaguely shaped like a young man, the features of the face worn smooth from repeated usage.

The nurse lowers her face to the page, and forcefully blows a gale of apricot gum scented breath over the page. Caught in the torrent, the human-shaped eraser rolls and flops haphazardly over the page, away from the nurses pretty, pursed lips.

Before it can roll off the standing desk down to the nurse's feet her plush palm slams down and stops its motion.

The waiting room for vaccine treatment is filling up and patients keep filing in through the front door but Jaqueline shows no signs of stress; a true professional who has been on her feet since the early hours of the morning, even after working out at the gym with her friend Felicity.

One of her prim, tanned hands lifts off the desk and slowly retreats into the darkness under the table. Barely aware of her actions, she is fidgetting with the eraser in her hand, squeezing it hard in her vast, supple palm repeatedly, flexing the trained muscles of her forearm. Her fingertips endlessly manipulate it while she distractedly receives information from patients and writes it down on her lined notepad.

"Hey Jaq!" A woman's musical voice addresses the nurse from behind.

Jaqueline turns with a grin to see another nurse entering the reception area from the staff office space. She is a young, arabic woman and her head is tightly adorned in a traditional *hijab* head scarf. A medical mask hides the majority of her face so that only her round green eyes are visible.

Jaqueline happily chats with the nurse a short while. Subconsciously her hands move to and fro, inserting and twisting the humanoid-shaped eraser onto and off of its home on the back end of the pencil as she fidgets and gesticulates her speech.

"Thanks for covering for me this afternoon! I know you've been here since this morning so i'll come in earlier tomorrow and you can have a shorter day", says the alluring, arabic woman.

"Sounds good! How was the dentist, Hatice?", Jaqueline enquires, turning back to the desk while raising one blonde eyebrow. She suspects the other nurse has not told her the real reason for her absence but she starts packing up her gym bag and drink bottle and moves away from the desk regardless.

"All good for another year. I hate going to the dentist", Hatice replies casually, taking Jaqui's place at the standing desk. Jaqui notices the hospital's digital camera strap hanging out of Hatice's left pants pocket but doesn't say anything, respecting her friend's privacy.

Hatice opens the visitor information notebook and pulls out the pencil from the cup, she does a double take, moving the pencil closer and closer to her large, round green eyes.

*"Another one..."*, thought the shocked nurse.

Hatice looked around at Jaqueline, still busy with her belongings and chatting away.

*"She doesn't know,"* Hatice pondered.

Jaqueline says off to the side, "I can't stand anyone looking in my mouth. Luckily I rarely eat candy so my teeth are straight and strong. Protein all the way, it's easy to drink."

She's been too distracted to notice Hatice's reaction and continues talking to herself. The poor male inserted onto the pencil was smaller than others Hatice had seen today, and looked to be in terrible condition. Moving the boy incredibly close to her eye she observed his face, oddly smooth and unrecognisable, but with two tiny open eyes. There was also not a hair on the boy's head. It must have been forcefully rubbed off all over the visitor sign-in book and blown away. Even the eyebrows were gone. He really looked like an eraser now. Hatice slowly looked up at Jaqueline, disturbed by the oblivious nurse's unfortunate actions.

"See you tomorrow!" said Jaqueline, finally leaving the room. Hatice already missed her cheerful presence, stuck now with only patients and visitors in the waiting area.

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I was paralysed, and more importantly, shrunk, and I still had no clue how it had happened. I'd been examined and probed by my klutzy mom, spied on by a mysterious woman with a medical mask in the window and now I was on the floor of my teenage sister's bedroom.

There was nothing I could do but wait until I found out more about my condition and for my mom or sister to realize I was missing.

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Like she did every day, Eleanor marched to her room and over to the bed, desperately wanting to relax. Unfortunately, she was stuck with a whole lot of homework. To make matters worse, her feet were sore and slightly burnt from the hot sand pavement on her walk back from the beach after school.

"Ow!", Eleanor muttered to herself with each step. "Ow, ow ow!"

As she got close to the bed she felt something peculiarly pleasant and cooling underfoot. She was about to investigate when she became distracted by a glimpse of herself in her long dressing mirror. Standing tall, she leaned in and adjusted her hair, momentarily forgetting her messy floor situation. Tidiness wasn't a priority before school hours but in the afternoon she had plenty of time to pick up her belongings and enjoy a clean bedroom.

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*You have to look down and see me right now!*

*Arrgg!*

The first thing I noticed was the texture of her sole. As it came down onto my body it appeared heavily wrinkled, as is common after a long bath. The very air around me was salty and briny, like the ocean, and it was obvious that Eleanor had just come home from a long swim at the beach.

Her narrow heel landed between my legs and so followed the rest of her foot, gradually compressing down, steamrolling mercilessly up my ever-dissapearing body like I was an abused tube of toothpaste. I was helpless and afraid for my life.

Unable to even look away as the plush sole swallowed up my knees, my thighs, then my groin with a strange, tingly sensation. The flowing skin folded over me and I sank into the tomboy's wrinkles while feeling more and more tightness and pain.

It was a shock to the system. My legs went numb and my crotch pressed deep into her hollow arch. The marshmallowy sole of her foot was normally creamy and pale, but today it was flushed pink and looked hot and bothered.

The teen's sole rapidly swallowed me up while simply settling onto the floor, a testament to their size and length. I recalled the number I had seen inside Eleanor's leather school shoes last week when i had first moved into her room. A mighty 11.5. The number was inscribed onto the sole of each silver buckled black mary-jane ... and Eleanor was still finishing high school.

Her feet were twice as long as my body.

My world darkened and my chest was compressed down by the pudgy ball of the tomboy's athletic foot. The air whooshed out of my lungs and out my mouth as if I were her foot pedal, blowing up onto her sole and up into the narrow gap under and between Eleanor's toes. I was afraid this would be the last thing I would ever see. Her foot and toes touched down and my face entered the wrinkled cleft in the ball of her foot, sealed in skin.

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Eleanor hadn't yet fully stepped down, not wanting to break whatever she'd left on the floor. She looked up and down her body in the mirror and pulled her blonde bangs out of her eyes, posing ironically, as she didn't really care what others thought of her looks.

"What's the point of being fake?" Eleanor thought to herself, but her anxieties still fought for her attention.

*How do I tell a guy i like him? Why hasn't anyone ever asked me out? What if i'm awkward? How do you kiss properly? What if i'm bad at it?*

Her foot shifted, and she felt a miniscule breeze on her toes again, very pleasant on her hot skin from the boiling pavement outside. Whatever was under her foot had deflated and sunk into her sole, cushioning and supporting her high arch.

"*Oh crap. What's that? Hope I haven't broken it*", Eleanor thought.

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At first I didn't realize it. It took me a few seconds to register the pain after the initial contact with Eleanor's left foot, bearing down on me like an industrial compactor and simply doing it's job of supporting it's owner. I was unaware that she had not in fact placed all her weight on that foot.

White hot, scalding heat.

Searing pain suddenly surged through my body at every contact point, fusing me to the plush sole.

*HNNNGH!*

I was being cooked alive and steam pressed by every sweat-filled wrinkle and ridged skin surface, brought to incredible temperatures from the hot side-walk outside on the street.

A rogue toe-pad, smooth and sweaty, descended onto my face with a wet slap and bore down onto me like a lover.

*Noooo! Arrrgghh!*

My eye-lids were forced wide open from the tight, enveloping skin over my face. Eleanor's second toe was simply resting on my doll-sized neck, mouth, nose and forehead. The slick skin of her toe-pad was all I could see and feel, slipping over my tortured open eyes.

*Gaackgh!! Please, lift up your toes!*

Eleanor's foot pivoted a fraction and her mighty toe ever so slowly wiped over my face, leaving behind sweaty, sandy residue, before moving to the side and depositing my head in the tapered crevice between the girl's two biggest toes.

I huffed as much oxygen as I could while my mouth was free. The atmosphere around me was thick and heavy, a combination of ocean salt and the tomboy's natural pheromones.

Heat radiated from every surface around me. Eleanor's toes were now sandwiching and clenching my cheeks and face like a vice, and I realised they were feeling and exploring my shape while their mistress was distracted with the mirror above. It wasn't a conscious action of hers at all, her toes were *hugging* me to stretch and make themselves feel better.

I felt a strange sense of deja vu. Something about my placement felt significant.

*Mmmmph!*

The wrinkled, pliable webbing between her tanned digits bore down on my neck and pushed up against my chin. My head and eyes were forced up towards the roof, towards the towering tomboy on top of and above me.

*Gaacgh! Eleanor, help!* But of course, I made no sound, paralysed as I was.

I peeked through her toes, feeling like a hidden spy and followed her strong ankles up to a pair of smooth, muscled legs leading to a distant, well-fitting, white bikini bottom.

*I shouldn't be looking there!*, I scolded myself, but my cheeks blushed and a warm rush travelled down my body. Eleanor was a swimmer, and had feminine muscular calves and thighs to show for it.

I became sensitive to the rows of ridged wrinkles encapsulating my body.

*Ghhhuuu...so...heavy...*

*I can't...*

My breathing stopped.

It wasn't physically possible for my body to receive oxygen. Eleanor's plush sole was in firm contact with the ground on all sides around me except for my face. The last of my oxygen reserves was squeezed out of my body, rushing through and out of Eleanor's toe gap.

The pudgy layer of soft sole I had sunken into was becoming firmer and tighter by the second. My mind began to race, bargaining with itself and Eleanor's sole and toes. I thought how grateful I would be if they would let me breathe, even for half a second.

*PLEASE, TOES! Let me breathe for a second!*

I mentally sobbed. I had unintentionally begun to plead directly to the tomboy's toes instead of their distracted owner.

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Eleanor lifted her heel, shifting her weight to the front of her foot which was already completely covering the object. Her arch rose up, as did the ball of her foot, and finally her dainty toes. Eleanor had to shake her foot to dislodge the object, which slowly peeled off her hot and bothered sole and landed with a plop onto the floor.

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Mercifully, the foot lifted, temporarily also lifting me. It began to point and flex wildly causing my body to separate from the undulating wrinkles like a floppy ragdoll.

My crotch detached from the deep hollow of Eleanor's arch with the faintest amount of suction.

"What is this?", I heard Eleanor say.

Air was passing into my lungs and any moment now Eleanor would save me.

*Thank.... you.*

*BOOM*

*THUD*

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"Mom! Did the girls down the street come over today? They left a doll in my room," Eleanor called out. With dexterity, Eleanor's trained toes daintily spread apart and picked up the doll by the neck so she didn't have to bend over.

It was a habit she had gained after years of dance practice and gymnastics. To train for ballet she had to strengthen her ankles and toes in a variety of ways to stand up on the tips of her pointe shoes and this was one of her old training methods. With the doll now in hand, Eleanor found it's small face familiar somehow. It's hair color was the same as her half-brother.

The tomboy cocked her head to the side, inquisitively. Her lips parted slightly and she pulled her blonde fringe away from her eyes before moving the doll even closer to her face in silent wonderment.

"*"This is the cutest thing i've ever seen!* Thought Eleanor, eyes open wide and unable to look away from the doll, inches away from her face.

*"Did Jeremy leave this for me to find as a late birthday present? He must be trying to make up for not getting me anything last week."*

Her fingers manipulated the doll, handling, poking and squeezing it from every angle.

*"It looks just like him*", Eleanor thought, amazed and enraptured.

"What a thoughtful gift".

She opened her hand further and looked at it's shoulders, chest, waist, and... Her thumb pad swiped to the side, something peeled off of it. A tiny willy.

The doll had private parts!

Eleanor silently gasped, her mouth opening wide and her cheeks flushing crimson.

There came a knocking on the door of the bedroom.

Felicity's gentle voice could be heard muffled from the other side. "Did you say something Elly? I got home not too long ago, the neighbour girls haven't been over."

Eleanor saw the door-handle beginning to turn and she panicked, quickly gripping the doll tightly and holding it behind her back. The door opened and Felicity poked her head in, curiously.

Eleanor stammered, "I... er... yes, no! Nevermind I... forgot what I was going to ask."

Felicity opened the door wider, revealing a small bowl of candy in her hand with a gentle, motherly smile.

"This is what you need for a study session! Grandma's special lollies. Just don't let her know I took them."

Still standing stiff and awkwardly, Eleanor watched her mom put the candies on her desk and leave before breathing a sigh of relief when the door finally clicked shut.

"Yikes...Why does this doll have a tiny thingy?", Eleanor thought.

Eleanor tossed Jeremy onto her desk and sat herself down in her white, high-backed gaming chair. After opening her laptop she began studying for her upcoming biology exam.

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I landed on Eleanor's desk, upright with my back against a stack of textbooks and my legs uncomfortably far apart, one resting on top of a large pink eraser. Finally, I could calm myself and process my thoughts. Eleanor was diligently working in front of me, eyes fixed on her laptop while scribbling in her book.

Every now and then her hand rose uptowards me and It was a good opportunity to look around the familiar room from my new vantagepoint. As big as a warehouse, Eleanor's room was like a giant trophy cabinet dedicated to her many achievements. Her swimming trophies lined a shelf and her dance and gymnastics medals and filled another wall.

Finally, hanging on the end of the bed-frame from a length of ribbon were Eleanor's favourite blue ballet slippers, old and worn from over-use. The insides were dark and grubby, and from the stench coming from them after ballet practice I had no doubt that the number of bacterial organisms living on the inside of the canvas shoes far outnumbered those on the outside.

The shoes were as much a trophy to Eleanor as any of the golden medals and trophies decorating the room and she wouldn't allow them to be washed, fearing they would shrink and not fit her feet anymore.

Unfortunately for me, the past week I'd had to pretend I couldn't smell anything. My step-mom had asked Eleanor to share her room with me while my grandma was over and I didn't want to appear ungrateful. I looked over to my pillow at the end of Eleanor's bed, next to a few stuffed animals, and reminisced having to try to sleep with those aromatic shoes hanging over my nose.

I started to get impatient. *Wow... this is boring*

Eleanor had been working hard for about 20 minutes when she yawned and leaned back, smacking her lips loudly as she sucked on a candy. She looked... sad? I could faintly hear a video being played on the laptop. A teenage girl was speaking on low volume, but I couldn't see the screen the way I was facing.

Eleanor's cheeks were sucked in tightly, accentuating her cheekbones, when I heard a small thud. She made a face and I knew she'd gotten the candy to pop in her mouth, releasing its sour gooey centre. My grandma had taught us both that trick.

"In today's video i thought i would provide you with some tips on how to kiss your crush for the first time! Maybe you've never kissed anyone before but don't worry, there are plenty of people out there in the same boat as you! Eleanor smiled slightly, appearing nervous and unsure of herself.

"For this video you will need a prop to practice on. If you can't find one, feel free to use your hand! Unpause the video when you have one."

 Her head whipped back and forth, quickly scanning her room for something suitable.

I watched relieved as she picked up a small teddy bear from the end of her bed and sat down again in the desk chair. Elly gave it a quick peck then rubbed her mouth and threw the bear back onto the bed. It seemed like the fur was irritating and got in the way. The giant girl's eyes abrupty locked onto mine.

The colour and blood drained from my face while Elly's eyes lit up and her open palm thrust towards me.