GOES AROUND - pt. 1
by Aborigen


It was 11pm in Nick's apartment, the sky dark outside and a cold wind battering at the old panes. The TV was mainly on for background noise, showing some "World's Worst Culinary Disasters" documentary or something, largely ignored by the two people in the living room. Nick and his girlfriend Elisa were at it again - though very in love with each other, there were a couple points of irreconcilable contention between them, usually revolving around physical expressions of affection. Each tended to blow the other argument up into something larger, forcing the other to defend a ridiculous situation that bore little relevance to the original issue.

"You seem to believe in absolute equality," Nick repeated, rubbing his temples, "while I'm trying to tell you I believe in balance, and they're not necessarily the same thing."

"I believe in balance too," Elise said quietly.

"No, let me explain. Your ideal relationship would be one in which both partners are equally matched in capability, weaknesses and strengths?"

"Yes, equality everywhere."

"But if each one of them is a capable individual, why would they need to be in a relationship at all?"

Elise narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you saying?"

Nick got up from the floor and joined her on the loveseat, where she sat with her feet tucked up beneath her. She was wearing a large, oversized sweater that made him want to drop everything and just cuddle her, but some sterile, rational part of him insisted on being understood. "I'm not saying we should break up!" he assured her, holding her hand. "I'm saying that I believe in balance: partners have different strengths, different weaknesses that work around each other. Sometimes one person's in control, sometimes the other one is."

Elise shook her head, and her auburn hair shimmered in the dim apartment lighting. Nick's fuses had been blowing lately, so he back on candles whenever possible. "I can't accept being tied up. I can't see how that's an expression of affection at all," she said, raising her voice. Though six inches shorter than him, Elise had a personal presence that put nearly everyone off-balance. Not that she was hostile, but she was remarkably self-assured and didn't cater to people's insecurities or sensitivities. Her slender hands rested on the knees of her black jeans, and her grey sweater looked almost ochre in the candlelight.

Nick wore a black t-shirt over a long-sleeve grey jersey, and black jeans as well. He unlaced his combat boots as he composed his thoughts. "I know where you come from, I know your history about being tied up."

She sighed. "It wasn't as dramatic as that. I just tried it with an ex-boyfriend, and it didn't work out. I didn't like being helpless, and I didn't want him helpless beneath me. I believe both people should be in control at all times. Your issue with domination and submission is really disturbing, Nick."

He looked over at her thoughtfully. "I don't think it's disturbing. I'm just tired of being in control all the time. I'd really like someone else to take charge; and before you say it, no, it's not enough to agree to be in charge. I really want someone to overpower me, overwhelm me; that's what I like about my giantess fetish."

This was a recent area of discussion for them, ever since his 'Towering Temptresses' catalog came in the mail. Elise found it lying around and went through its pages, progressively more unsettled by everything she found until she could sit him down and ask him what it was about. She could understand being obsessed with women's bodies, she could even understand objectification to a certain extent, but the predominant theme of women aggressively dominating women truly disturbed her and she couldn't accept it. She asked Nick to just keep it away from her, keep that part of his life to himself, and he agreed to that.

"I can't talk about this anymore tonight, Nick," she said. "I'm going out for a cigarette." Nick couldn't permit smoking in his apartment, so Elise would light up outside, at the front of the building.

"Want me to come with you?" he asked - he didn't like her being alone in his low-income neighborhood.

She shook her head, and again her hair bounced and lofted in the warm apartment atmosphere. "I need to be alone for a few minutes, sort this all out." She pulled her shoes on, slipped into her jacket, and locked the apartment door behind her as she left.

Nick sighed heavily and leaned back in the loveseat, truly frustrated. He didn't feel the need to bring Elise into his sordid fantasies - sometimes they made him feel dirty and callous, and he never wanted to associate that feeling with her. However, it was still a tremendously powerful erotic force, one he was unwilling to give up simply because his girlfriend couldn't reconcile with it. He lit up some incense and set it next to the candle on the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table, and curled up sideways on the loveseat to try to calm down.

He dozed for just a moment, so briefly that Elise hadn't returned from her smoke break, but when he opened his eyes he saw the incense had wafted up into a cloud above the candle. The candlelight illuminated the cloud, and for a moment he thought it had taken the shape of a woman's face.

Nick sat up and stared into the cloud, and then he knew it was a woman's face. It was two feet across and three feet high, nearly transparent and slightly shifting as the incense caught every tiny breeze in the apartment. The face was evenly balanced and finely-sculpted, with high cheekbones, full lips, and a stern gaze that bore down upon him. The apparition seemed to open its lips and exhale.

"You've got to be kidding me," Nick said flatly, as the world rushed up around him. The loveseat cushion spread outward in all directions, the weave of its fabric thickening and bulking up beneath him. His shirts welled up around him and billowed to the cushion, nearly empty but for a tiny, naked man sitting up in near (but hardly complete) surprise. His jeans draped over the edge of the loveseat and onto the hardwood floor. As Nick crawled out of the neck of his shirt, he saw the smoky apparition dissipate into thin air, just as Elise slipped the key in the lock of his door to let herself inside.

Nick watched his girlfriend enter, gazing far overhead. Her normally slight body now took on a monumental proportion and moved massively through the air, like a flying skyscraper or something like that. Nick shook his head at this ridiculous situation, getting inexplicably shrunk down by some mysterious mystical force, for his girlfriend to find him. And find him she did, eventually. She shed her jacket and tossed it onto the arm of the loveseat, nearly burying him in leather. She pulled off her shoes and sat down on the loveseat where she'd been before - he saw her full hips expand above him as she bent over, and then she sat down in slow motion. His heart raced as her buttocks stretched the black denim like two massive planetary spheres, perfect and inviting in their roundness, as they descended from the heavens to strike near him. Their collision with the cushion rocked his gigantic world, toppling him to the side. He had to grab the hem of his shirt collar to keep rolling down against her hip.

Elise sniffed the incense and grinned softly, though Nick could only peer up at the side of her face and see the cheek pull back. She ran her fingers through her hair - Nick saw fingers nearly as long as himself disappearing into her tresses - and leaned back in the loveseat. It was then she seemed to notice her boyfriend's clothes on the seat beside her and for a moment she wondered if he were naked in the bedroom, waiting for her to find him stretched out on the bed. But her keen eyes picked out her diminutive boyfriend, reeling from this overwhelming experience to try to kneel and look up at her.

Unflappable as ever, she pursed her lips for a moment and studied him before saying, "Okay, this is a remarkable development in our relationship, but I'm still not going to be dragged into these fantasies of yours."


Part 2

Nick stared up at Elise, and Elise stared down at Nick. They stared at each other for a long time. Elise tried to imagine what mystical or physical condition could've happened to actually shrink Nick down, while Nick's thoughts were less pragmatic: he was simply drinking in the impressive monolith that was his girlfriend. Her hand rested on the shoulder of his shirt beside her, and sitting upright, he was just taller than her wrist. He figured he had to be about the size of an action figure, about four inches, based on the size of her hand compared to his new perspective.
Elise slowly raised her hand and extended a forefinger, making no sudden moves to startle her miniscule boyfriend. He'd been sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees; he shifted to lean back on his arms and stretch his legs out, opening his chest to her. She brought her fingertip in: to him, it was the size of a large log, maybe thicker than a telephone pole. He marveled at how such a huge item could hover in the air before him. She brought it in closer, slowly, until the soft, rounded tip of her finger finally made contact with his chest. Frowning thoughtfully, she stroked his bare chest repeatedly, exercising as much caution as she could in this, fully cognizant of the fact that she could probably crumple him like a Dixie cup.

"How, exactly, did this happen to you?" she asked him. "I mean, I was just gone for five minutes. What could you possibly have done?"

Nick shrugged, wondering absently if he'd have to exaggerate his gestures so her eyes could see them, then mused over how clownish that would feel. He'd feel like a miniature Jim Carrey, without the paycheck. "I really have no idea, hon. I just stretched out to take a little nap, and, well, I lit some incense, first."

Elise smiled, sniffing the air. "Yeah, I noticed that. I really like it. What kind is it?"

He pointed at a foil packet on the steamer trunk. "You tell me. I've never seen it before. It was just next to that purple candle, I figured it was yours." Her blank expression - broad as a billboard - told him much. "Oh, how hokey," he said, rubbing his temple with one tiny hand.

"What's that?" she asked, settling herself to face him. She turned towards him and drew up one enormous, black-clad leg perpendicular to him, tucking its foot under her other knee and leaning forward to listen to him. Despite his miniature size, she had remarkably little difficulty in hearing him: he sounded like he was speaking to her through an old aviator's radio with the volume turned down just a little.

Nick gestured all about him, laughing. "Oh, all of this. It's happening just like in one of those giantess stories I like to read. Some mysterious element just appears out of nowhere to give a character dominion over the laws of physics, or some paranormal event takes place and someone falls victim to it, blah-dee-blah..."

Never having read any of those stories - not for lack of Nick's suggestion - Elise could only trust in what he was saying. She asked, "Is that what this is like?"

He nodded. "It's just like this. You and I argue about giantesses, you storm out-"

"I didn't storm out," she asserted. "I went out for a smoke, just to take all this in."

"Yes, that's right, honey. I just mean, that's a common formula. Foreshadowing, an opportunity for the event in this case, the incense out of nowhere. I light it up, some woman's face appears in the smoke, and she blows on me and I shrink down. You come in, yadda yadda yadda..."

"Yadda yadda yadda?" Elise asked. "This happens in all the stories?"

"Well, sometimes it's a magical potion that an unhappy housewife discovers, or a ring given to an abused girlfriend by a witch, or an amulet from aliens, I think it was, once."

"And is the giantess always as reluctant as I am?"

Nick shook his head. "Oh, no. If it's a revenge story, she leaps right into the action, abusing her diminished tormentor with her body, of course."

Elise looked down at him. "Is that what you want me to do, Nick? I really wouldn't get any enjoyment out of hurting you."

"And I really wouldn't enjoy getting the snot beat out of me, either," he said, "though I would like to get a little closer to you."

Elise looked at him sideways. "How do you mean? This is really unnerving, Nick."

He shakily rose to his feet, standing upon a broad plane of fabric that used to be his t-shirt. He raised his arms slightly and called up to her, "Well, let's just... get used to each other, like this. Could you pick me up and, say, rest me on your knee?"

She frowned thoughtfully again - Nick always thought that expression was cute, the way her lower lip would push out, but at this size, staring up at a beautiful, even-faced goddess pouting at him, his heart throbbed enthusiastically - but upturned her palm and rested her hand on the shirt, just beside him, not trusting herself to grip him gently enough. He stepped onto her palm, and again his pulse raced at the soft fleshy feel beneath his bare feet. He braced himself against her thumb, noting how tiny his hand looked beside her huge, silver thumbring, and climbed into her palm. He sat down like he had on the couch, drawing his legs up and hugging his knees loosely.

Out of an irresistable curiosity, Elise had to raise him to her face, as if she were studying a gem or other small artifact. Caution was always on her mind, careful not to crush him or let him spill out of her hand, but she drew him near her eyes and scrutinized him. It was certainly her boyfriend, and she couldn't get over the detail of his face, the tiny eyebrows, the miniscule fingernails on each tiny finger, and... well, he was naked, she was bound to notice his genitalia. She sighed, already missing how he used to feel inside her.

Nick, on the other hand, was in a private heaven. Her enormous body was no less lithe as the sheer cliff face of her sweater raced past his little platform, and he felt a wonderful, longing adoration for her huge, soft breasts behind the knitted wool. And again, if she was beautiful before, as a giantess she was positively breathtaking. He absolutely lost himself in her huge hazel eyes, and he stared at them, watching them twitch slightly as she examined every aspect of his tiny self. Her thin, button nose was even more adorable, and he smiled at the thought of stroking it comfortingly, or however. And her lips? Nick's heart skipped a beat as he thought of those huge, soft lips, parted slightly in wonderment. Her breath, slightly sweet with decay, gently suggested itself at him, and his gaze peered into the black cavern beyond her teeth.

His reverie was broken by sudden motion as she lowered him back down and rested her hand on her knee. Very reluctantly, he climbed off and perched upon her thigh, lying on his back to stabilize himself as well as touch her leg with as much of his body as possible. Elise withdrew her hand and leaned over him. Nick, enshrouded in the canopy of her hair, inhaled her sweet musk deeply.

"Is that better? There, on my leg?" she asked him.

Slowly he remembered how to speak English and assured her it would do. He really didn't want to push this issue with her, knowing how quickly it could spin out of control, and yet, he was so eager for more! He supposed he could pace himself, since he was probably going to be this size for a while, and she'd be kind enough to keep him around. Anything could happen, he told himself.

"You're awfully comfortable around me, for someone so helpless and naked," she remarked.

He blushed furiously at that and crumpled back up into a ball. "I, um, yeah, my clothes," he stammered.

Elise grinned brightly, and it warmed him somewhat. She said, "You know, you were never shy about lounging around with me completely nude before."

"Yeah, well, you were usually naked with me and I was a bit taller than you, too." He smiled slowly. "You know, if you really wanted to even the score a little..."

"Don't even think of it," she said sternly. "I'm not going to take off my clothes to go along with your little fantasy. This is really weird for me, Nick." She sighed, and again breathed a gust of warm, personal air over his tiny body. She raised her forefinger up again, showing it to him so he knew it was coming, then slowly stroked his side. Tenderly, she felt for his ribs, then his pelvis, and said quietly, "Come on and open up, Nick. You were cute, like that. You still look really nice, even at that size. I like looking at you," she added, when he looked up at her. He unfolded himself, slowly, and she continued to stroke his body with her fingertip.

It was a remarkable sensation for him, to have this huge, rounded pad of flesh running over his body. She never pressed painfully hard, but with enough pressure to feel like a hard snuggle, and he enjoyed it. He closed his eyes and focused on the sensation, trying to push his exposed self out of his mind. She rubbed her huge fingertip in broad circles over his chest, and he dug his head back into her thigh, grinning indulgently. She ran her fingertip down the outside of his legs, and inevitably he wondered if she would grace him with a gentle touch between his thighs. 'All in good time, all in good time,' he thought, sighing.


Part 3

Nick and Elise went to bed that night, in the colloquial sense. Nick didn't actually get to share the bed, as Elise was afraid of rolling on top of him in her sleep (though he secretly relished the idea) and crushing him. He tried to assure her that she was typically a very still and motionless sleeper, but he suspected her own reservations about this whole giantess scenario were her truer motivations for the accommodations: he spent the night in her jewelry box on the dresser. The lid was propped open and it was already lined with velvet, so it wasn't too uncomfortable. But lying there in the silence of the night, laying on a folded pair of socks for cushioning, staring at the ceiling, the actual significance of his situation began to creep up on him.
Obviously, he couldn't go in for work tomorrow. Was he going to lose his job? Would he ever get his height restored, so he could go back and request his position again? His and Elise's incomes were what enabled them to afford their apartment in the nicer part of town: now what? He rolled over to his side, staring at the bronze lip of the jewelry box. Traditionally, he realized, this was the part of the story where the tiny man realizes what a tremendous burden he poses upon the giantess, and makes plans to flee and fend for himself. Nick didn't consider himself a coward, but he knew he didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell outside, in the city at large. If he didn't get run over by a car or hunted down by a cat, Christ, some transient in the neighborhood might find him... Nick shuddered violently and pulled a corner of sock up to cover himself. His soft brown eyes penetrated the velvet wall of his bed-box - there was also the issue of his friends. They got along with Elise as well, and they would doubtlessly grill her with questions once Nick had disappeared for a couple of days. And, oh, damn, there was that techno show this Saturday: Universal Female Adapter was playing at Bivouac, and he'd purchased tickets ahead of time. Rolling over to lie on his chest, Nick reasoned that would be the easiest solution of all the problems facing him: Elise would simply get in with her ticket and keep him in her pocket, and while he wouldn't use his own ticket, he'd still be seeing the show, so he wouldn't exactly be out $12. Elise could give the ticket to one of her friends, and... Nick slowly drifted to sleep, lost in his thoughts.

Far off in a remote under-mountain laboratory, a dozen burned-out scientists buzzed about their clinical hive, checking monitors and taking notes in a cryptic shorthand.

"How's subject #3257 coping?" a tall, greying man in labcoat asked.

The younger assistant, behind a console of three screens and two keyboards, read the data off a neurotransmission transcriber: "Subject #3257 seems to be mid-range. This strip here represents his theta waves, indicating he's fairly receptive to the idea of being a tiny person. This erratic feedback up here, however, represents a synaptic transfer we've correlated to personal conflict. He could be experiencing anything from fear of a household pet to an inventory of exactly how his life has changed." The younger man leaned over a 3-ring binder of codes and patterns, running his fingers down to the third paragraph. "...Okay, this seems more analogous to introspection, so it's reasonable to assume he's assessing his responsibilities. ...Oh, wait, now he's going to sleep."

The older man nodded and made terse notes on his clipboard. "Your summary?" he asked.

"Subject is experiencing typical self-doubt and the precepts of alienation, but seems to have an adequate coping mechanism. Also, he entered into this stage fairly early, so he may be particularly resourceful, or merely confident in his environment."

Again, the greying man nodded and noted this as well. "He's probably worried about rent or something," he muttered. "Mail them off their first check in the morning."

"Got it," the young man said. "You want another holographic imaging pattern sent over, to reassure him of his fate or somesuch?"

The older man scanned the clipboard, then looked up at the Big Screen thoughtfully. "Naah, that won't be necessary. Just mail them the check, and look in on #2290's status for me."

Nick stretched as he arose, listening to Elise bumping around the bedroom, fumbling for her clothes. He smiled to himself, listening. "Honey," he called out, "I just had the strangest dream..."

Elise walked over to the dresser and leaned over him, resting on her elbows and leaning down to blow him a kiss from a short distance. She wore only a pair of panties and a pair of socks, from what he saw. Her breasts, moderately-sized when he was big, were enormous and rested upon her forearms with a seductive, ponderous weight. "You're locked in your idiom, Nick, and you know I hate clichés..." She lifted him up by grasping the sock upon which he reclined and set him onto the dresser, commencing to refill her jewelry box.

He grinned up at her and said, "No, seriously, I dreamed Nikita Kruschev and I were in a basement with only one exit, this rickety wooden staircase, and the room slowly filled up with melted butter." He scratched his head and rolled off the sock, walking around on the dresser to stretch his legs. The varnished mahogany chilled his feet, but he withstood it. "And he had three boiled lobsters, and I had five lobsters and an Alaskan king crab, I think, and then Carl Sagan walked in with a lit cigarette..."

Elise laughed and stroked his short, brown hair with a broad fingertip before turning around to straighten out the bedsheets and look for her bra. "That wasn't your dream," she said, "that was an old SNL sketch we saw on that tape last week, remember?"

Nick rubbed his chin. "Oh yeah," he said. He realized he needed a shave, he was getting kind of rough, but then, who would notice? Elise? What, were his tiny little whiskers going to take on the quality of fine razorblades and shred her skin? He decided he could let it go for a while, work it out later. He called out to her, "Hey, don't you have work today?"

"Yeah, I'm covering Jennifer's hours at the bookstore. She has to take off for a wedding, and I could use the extra money. Some new 'feng shui' material came in I'm really interested in." She paused and looked at him, standing straight. The orange sunrise shone through the window to her side, and half of her glowed with a peachy luminescence. "Oh no. What about you?"

He paused in his stride on the dresser. "I, um..." he started, then sighed. "Look. I know it'll creep you out to keep me around with you, so just..." He walked over to a fine silver ring and began booting it around, idly. "How about you put me on the steamer trunk and leave the TV on? Slice up a banana for me to eat throughout the day, and... um, get me a bottle cap from a soda bottle in the recycling bag."

Elise sat down on the edge of the bed and started brushing her curly auburn hair. Nick took a moment's enjoyment in watching her nicely-shaped breasts shudder from side to side as she vigorously brushed herself. "A bottle cap? What for?" she asked.

"You know, for... waste products," he said. "They may be tiny, but I still have my intestines. I still make poop."

Elise stared at him a while as her brushing slowed down, and then her hand fell to her side. After a thoughtful moment, she rose wordlessly from the bed and started rifling through her closet for the day's outfit. She yanked out a cranberry linen button-up blouse and her khaki cargo skirt. She dressed hastily, noticing the time, and pulled on a pair of hiking boots, to be laced up later. Nick held his arms around his ribs as she reached over for him - and he was struck by the intimidating visual of her open, flat palm rushing at her, her huge fingers splayed and stretching around him. Embraced in her morning-sleepy warmth, he grinned to himself. "Comedy Central should work for most of the day," he called up to her, "if they don't keep playing Johnny Dangerously."

However, she didn't take him to the living room. She grabbed the sock from the dresser, unbuttoned one of her cargo pocket, and wrapped him up in the sock before inserting him carefully into her left cargo pocket. Nick looked up at her in genuine surprise; her face was one of resolute determination, and he imagined she was probably overriding some of her personal compunctions against this, but apparently she thought this was the best idea - he was coming with her to work. Elise kissed her fingertip and pressed it against his tiny cheek before buttoning up the pocket and running out to her car. Nick jostled very pleasantly against her firm, warm thigh and looked forward to the rest of the day.


Part 4

It wasn’t a tight-fitting skirt that Elisa chose that day, it was more a blossom of khaki and linen with shallow billows-pockets on either side. Nick found plenty of room to stretch out as he shared the driver’s seat with her in the mid-90s model VW Jetta. A brighter red than her burgundy blouse, it rolled out of the driveway and took off for the highway as Elisa headed off to work.

Nick again took stock of his surroundings, a sensory inventory to calm his mind and help him to focus. If he let his mind wander he either became unreasonably horny or frantic with the realization of how much his life had changed and how powerless he was to recover it. Paradoxically, there also lingered the thought that this was perhaps a temporary condition, hope against hope, and he should burn these images and senses into his mind while he may observe them from this vantage point. He knelt upon the seat, from within the cargo pocket, and splayed his fingers upon the fabric beneath him. The linen was of a very loose weave, at his size, but the fibers were plenty strong and unyielding. He could just barely sense the contours of the driver’s seat, the rough weave upholstering and plastic seams. All around him the roar of the engine vibrated the air, accelerating and dwindling away like a valley of angry dragons just on the other side of the mountain…

The mountain, the warm ridge of female flesh beside him. Heat radiated off of Elisa’s thigh like a sun-baked side of a building. He felt it was such a different sense of heat, as well, since it burned from her muscles and exuded through her sweet, sweet skin. If you could feel the quality of scent in a perfume, if scent were a tactile stimulation, the heat off her thigh would be it. He smiled, closed his eyes, and let it soak into him.

From without layers of fabric enshrouding the tiny man, Elisa said, “Hold on, Nick, tight turn…” Gravity abruptly shifted and threw him against his girlfriend’s thigh as she swung the vehicle hard to the left. The car settled back in its lane and her massive log of leg rolled gently upon Nick, overpowering him mindlessly, effortlessly. He found himself half-pinned beneath her thigh as she adjusted herself in the seat. Not wishing to jinx this magic moment, as the blood drained from his legs yet his erection rose beneath the huge monolith of flesh, Nick held his breath and said not a word. “Sorry about that, honey. Crazy drivers today. You okay?” she spoke to him.

He carefully released his breath and called up, “Oh, sure, not a problem,” as casually as possible. She seemed satisfied with the answer as she made no move to pick herself up off of her boyfriend. For the rest of the trip to the bookstore, Nick enjoyed every pothole, speed bump, and thank-you-ma’am in the road for the tremendous shock wave they sent through dear Elisa’s thigh, rippling and rumbling over his tiny body excitingly. He knew there wasn’t enough gas in the world to keep this car going long enough for him to tire of this wonderful situation, and all too soon they pulled into the parking lot.

Gathering her things, Elisa saw her cargo pocket was caught beneath her leg and hastily yanked it out from beneath her seat. “Oh my God!” she cried. “Are you okay, Nick? Did I crush you?” She extracted him cautiously from the pocket and held him up to her face to examine the tiny nude man.

His legs tingled pleasantly from the ride, as well as the circulation restoring to them, and he could only smile back up at her concerned expression. He attempted to reassure her: “I’m perfectly fine, honey, really. It was a snug fit, but it wasn’t unpleasant at all! I hardly noticed.” He waved amiably up at her to accentuate his claim.

She seemed satisfied with his answer. Hesitantly, she raised him to her face - which beautiful visage swelled and grew in his vision - and placed as gentle a kiss upon his forehead as possible. To him, this translated into two beautiful lips the size of a small sleeping bag puckering up, hovering tantalizingly above him, and somewhat roughly mashing into his face. Again, a delightful sensation, as his vision, scent, taste, hearing, and tactile capacities were overwhelmed with her soft, sweet lips and anxious breathing. He pressed his face into her kiss, his heart pounding, and placed both hands modestly over his raging hard-on.

“It’s time for me to go to work, I’m almost late,” she noted, slipping him back into her cargo pocket. “I’ll try to be more careful throughout the day. You be sure and let me know if anything’s wrong, okay?” She tilted her head as her hiking boots clomped across the asphalt. Not hearing anything from him, she added, “How about you just tug on my skirt or poke at my leg once for yes and twice for no?” That provoked one soft little fist, smaller than a pencil eraser, nudging at her leg. Again satisfied, she strode through the huge doors of the bookstore and made a beeline for the back room, to punch in for her workday.

Nick’s thoughts were racing as he lay nestled in her pocket. The view never changed, except for patches of light and shadow sailing over the fabric, but the noise was a cacophony of activity that suddenly sent a shiver of panic up his spine. When normal-sized, he’d never been a fan of crowds in particular but could manage his way through one with minimal effort. Now, however, the noises were overwhelming and he knew they were coming from giants several dozen times his own size. If the pocket were somehow to give and he tumbled onto the floor… would anyone even see him before he was crushed beneath some huge sole? Would his last image of Elisa be that of her voluminous skirt sailing away like a perambulatory mountain of khaki, just before a dirty white Converse sole descended upon his frail frame? His heart started racing and his fists clutched handfuls of fabric. He told himself logically there was no way he could produce enough weight to test the strain of the fabric and fall to the floor, he knew this was true. It was simply a train of thought his mind, once engaged, found difficult to leave. He took small consolation in being so close to his girlfriend, since she was wrapped up in her own world and he only idly bounced against her thigh.

It took him a few minutes to calm himself down; it helped that Elisa stopped for some coffee before going to work. Sitting in the café she reached down to gently stroke what she hoped would be Nick’s back. It felt right, the concave bend in the middle of tiny tangled limbs. “How are you doing down there, honey?” she whispered, staring into her coffee.

Nick gathered his breath and called up to her as gently as he could, “I’m fine, sweetheart. I just had a panic attack, I’m fine now.” After a moment he added, “Promise me if you suddenly feel your pocket go a couple grams lighter or you don’t feel me banging off your thigh, you’ll stop and look around for me?”

She wondered where that came from but agreed to it promptly.

Soon coffee was over and she had to attend to her duties in the store. It was a game for Nick to try to pick out one sound out of the ocean of noises and identify it. Sometimes it was easy: the shrill cry of an angry child; two matrons gabbering about cooking recipes; the plaintive whine of some loser looking for the self-help section (Nick suspected there was an oxymoron in there somewhere). Sometimes it was more difficult, when all voices were raised to a similar volume, or when the speaker could have been a young boy or a small woman, or someone of either gender with a dire smoker’s rasp. Venturing within his pocket, he slowly raised himself to his feet, gripping the pleats of the cargo pocket very tightly, and extended his legs until his head just came up to the seam of the pocket. He dared to grip the seam and pull just a little downwards…

And the entire world was opened up to him, albeit from a dramatically altered perspective. Much of the world was a blurry rush of book spines, colors and textures, as Elisa skirted the aisles and led customers to their destinations, but once in a while she stood still and he could peer about. He was about eye-level with baby strollers and toddlers; he was merely knee-high to the rest of the population. As fearful as he’d been before, trepidation slowly gave way to amazement as he studied the once-familiar landscape around him. Jeans strode by powerfully; skirts fluttered past; hips rumbled and asses shook, and shoes and boots engaged in thunderous collision with the floor non-stop. He was surprised to imagine that everyone’s spines didn’t just shatter with the terrible impact of heel upon floor, time and time again! Yet there they were, tall and strong and proud, going about their business.

Nick began to wish he could steer Elisa around rather than jostle about only as far as she stood or walked, because there were a couple interesting straits he would have liked to pursue. Two teenaged girls were sitting in the café talking to each other rapidly, their smooth hands fluttering in the air, fingertips twitching and twirling like the antennae of butterfly in communication with each other. Their part of the café happened to be next to the foreign history section, and Elisa’s customer proved to be quite dull, requiring several explanations to get across exactly what this section offered in terms of history and other countries. Keep talking, keep asking questions, you idiot, Nick thought to himself. He was staring transfixedly at the girls in their seats, being maybe a few yards away from them (his scale). They both wore jeans that were nicely faded and clung snugly to their developing hips. The girl on the right tended to shift in her seat with some frequency, as if never comfortable with how she were arranged. Full within his gaze, her ass shifted and slid over the wooden chair, rising gently and then lowering, plumping out with the ponderous weight of the young woman squooshing down upon it. More talking, more rocking back and forth - she seemed to enjoy rolling back and forth on her buttocks, her pelvis never touching the chair as she floated on layers of muscle, fat, and young firm skin - all accentuated by the lines and creases in her jeans. Nick felt himself get a little aroused, and cupped his hand over his genitalia to keep from poking into the fabric of her pocket (as if anyone could notice).

Then she did an unconscious, sexy thing: she shucked her sandals off, gripping each back with her toes and pushing them off, and tucked her right foot beneath her left thigh. So situated, she leaned forward to talk conspiratorily to her friend, as if imagining anyone in the café could possibly care what two teenage girls have to confide in each other. Nick cared, however, for her new position: she had a darling row of pink-orangey toes that twitched reflexively before a broad pad of soft instep. All her skin seemed to glow with youth, and the enormous log of thigh that pressed upon it resisted spreading all over by virtue of the strong young skin encasing it. Her toes twitched and he caught a glint of burnished silver - she was wearing a toe ring! Nick never thought much of them before, but now, seeing that band of carved metal around one slender, darling toe, waggling seductively beneath a huge wave of faded denim painted onto a long, strong thigh…

Abruptly, Elisa spun on her heel and marched over to the information desk. Her customer had evidently found what he was looking for and was fine to leave on his own for a while. Nick bit his lip to keep from howling with disappointment and longing, as the flap above the pocket bore down upon his head: Elisa rubbed his head gently with one fingertip to make sure he was okay and to remind him she was thinking about him. She didn’t find it so unpleasant to keep her boyfriend around with her: even if he couldn’t talk to her, he still kept her company and it made work a little more bearable.

“Yes, yes, I love you too,” he muttered darkly, reaching out of the pocket to stroke her fingertip. For a moment he felt bad, what with his girlfriend being right there; indeed, her thigh being the mighty redwood that stood behind him scant inches away. But only for a moment for, as Elisa turned, he saw something that froze his blood and turned his heart to stone.

A young girl, maybe six years old, was bending over just slightly to stare at him with huge blue eyes. Her thick brown hair fell like a waterfall around the sides of her round face, and her pink mouth was hanging agape as she studied the tiny little man in the woman’s pocket. One of her arms was pulled idly back by her mother, only making a token gesture of restraining the girl; her other arm lifted, trance like, and her young, stubby fingers extended and reached straight for Nick’s tiny head.

TBC