GRANDMA’S DIARY by G T Steptoe 2004 “…And shrink you down, shrink you down, ‘til you are in my power… Shrink you down, shrink you down, ‘til over you I tower...” She looked up from the ancient, browning paper, her eyes staring into the distance. “Wow,” Kate breathed, “Just imagine if it actually worked…” The girl’s eyes sparkled in the light of the reading lamp as she imagined what she could do if she had the power to make things small, and her slightly open mouth closed to a smirk as she pictured that idiot David and what he would think if she shrunk him down to only a couple of inches tall. It would sure be a fantastic way to pay him back for all the times he’d tried to feel up her skirt, or hang behind her when they went upstairs to class every morning. Like most very attractive girls, Kate was aware of her beauty, and certainly didn’t mind the admiring stares of all the boys at college as she strolled past them and allowed them a slight smile of acknowledgement. No, she didn’t mind at all, and even if an errant breeze flicked up her skirt she’d just laugh and brush it down, quietly enjoying the thought of so many guys getting an ! eyeful of the silky smooth panties that covered her soft, feminine curves. But that was where it stopped, in her opinion, and to have a fat slob like David Williams slipping his hand up her skirt, his fingers actually touching her – that was more than any nineteen-year-old girl could stand. “Yeah,” she breathed. “Just imagine…” Kate turned back to the book that lay open on the table in front of her. It was an ancient tome, entirely written by hand way back in the early eighteen hundreds. Okay, that was not even two hundred years ago, but all the same, it was the oldest thing she owned, and since she had been given it as part of her inheritance from Grandma, she had spent hours going through it. At first, she just flipped through it like most others had probably done, and just like the others she had assumed it was simply a diary. It sure began that way, and most of the entries were so everyday and boring that they only held her attention for a short time. But unlike her grandmother who had got it from her grandmother and apparently never read it, Kate was assiduous. Then, a couple of weeks ago, she had come across a page that started much like any other: “The Sky is fill’d with dark’ning Clouds and I feel that soon ‘twill rain…” Most entries started with a weather report of some kind or other, and although they looked rather poetic, they got a bit repetitive after a while. It sure seemed to rain a lot in those days, Kate considered. Shrugging her shoulders, she read on, and just as if her great-great Grandma had nothing better to do, she had then written: “A Spell for Keeping Meat Fresh.” Well, this could be interesting, the girl figured, so she read it through, and realized that it was exactly what it said it was. That is, it was a magic spell. Quite short and simple, and (great-great Gran noted) “…most efficacious and One I use often, ‘specially when Hares and Quail are in abundance & will not Keep.” Fascinated, Kate had tried the spell out on a small piece of steak she pinched from the fridge late one night when her mum was sleeping. She placed the meat on a clean dish and said the required words over it, then shut it away from light (as the book instructed she should). To her amazement, the meat stayed fresh, so even after five days it was just as good as when she had first performed the spell. Kate was so impressed by this rather bland but incredibly useful bit of magik (which would put a lot of whitegoods companies out of business) that she went back through the diary to the first page and read through it all again. This time, she didn’t skip over the lines of verse dotted here and there as she had done before. Now, reading them all with a true scholar’s interest, she discovered to her delight that nearly all of them were spells – even if their titles often gave no hint of the fact. She copied them all out and learned them by heart – spells for keeping her complexion clear, for enriching the flavour of an apple, for keeping ‘the night’s flying Insects’ away, for easing her menstrual pains (and Oh Joy! It worked beautifully!), for shutting the mouth of a vicious dog (well it stopped the neighbour’s dobermann from barking all night, even if it still whined a bit; she wasn’t sure about its actual bite), spells for opening flowers, undoing knots, opening locks, makin! g lamps glow brighter and stopping candles flickering and smoking, spells for all the things that troubled a person of that distant time. And now – hidden quite openly in the middle of a page on picking wild strawberries in the forest – a spell to reduce things in size. Plain and simple; no ifs or buts. Kate leaned over the page again, mouthing the words like a small child as she repeated them to herself, just learning a line at a time and never saying the entire spell when she ‘had no object’. As the diary advised in several places, “When saying a spell, always keep in Your mind’s eye, that Thing or Object which it is that You wish to change or Affect in any Way. Ne’er say the Words idly or out of Neglect, for they are Words of Power for Your Use, so use Them well…” Of course, there was no advice to not say them silently, for that was the only way to learn the spell complete and fluently. The book admonished that “…the Spell must come forth Complete, without stutterence. If You utter a Word in error or out of Order, You must begin again from the very Beginning, or the Spell will not complete, but will Hang in Wait…” It was only later – the night before last, to be exact – that Kate learned that she could ‘prepare’ spells in advance and let them ‘hang in wait’. She had actually read about ‘key words’ or ‘triggers’ for spells before somewhere, but it was nice to know that they really existed and actually worked. So now, as she learned the spell to reduce things in size, she repeated it several times, just barely loud enough for herself to hear her whisper. The loudness didn’t matter, because all things were relative and if it could be heard at all, that was enough. Then, when she was sure she had it word-perfect, the girl repeated it through without pause, only keeping back the key phrase “over you I tower”. “I tower over you,” Kate said to herself, knowing that the altered phrase wouldn’t trigger the spell. But it still kept the image in her mind, and it was an image she liked – especially when she thought of that stupid fat slob David Williams. David Hubert Herbert Williams, could you believe it? Be nice to tower over him, she mused. The girl closed her book, her dark brown eyes gleaming as she said to herself, “But first I have to test it out.” Kate drummed her fingers on the book’s cover as she pondered a suitable object for her first attempt. She had no doubt that the spell would work; her maternal ancestor had clearly been a witch of a very high order. Her only interest was exactly how the spell would affect what she cast it on. The jarringly loud barking of the neighbours’ dobermann brought her out of her reveries, but instead of unleasing a silencing spell on the loathsome animal, Kate decided that he would make an ideal first subject. She stood and smoothed her short skirt, then slipping on a pair of sandals, she went outside into the back yard. No lights were showing in the neighbours’ house so she guessed they were out somewhere. She was grateful for that, because if they didn’t go out on a Saturday night they often invited a bunch of people over and partied till all sorts of ungodly hours. The dog, of course, stayed outside and barked away the whole time the party went on, so the only escape was to get herself invited to a girlfriend’s place. And she was running out of girlfriends she could call on at short notice, as the parties never even started before ten at night. It was rough for Kate, because she had a McJob and often got rostered to do Sundays. Eight o’clock start. Such is the life of ! many a college girl or guy. Whatever, party or no party, Snoopy the dobermann was doing his guard-dog bit, barking flat out at anything human or otherwise that went by on the sidewalk on the other side of the high front hedge. Kate still couldn’t believe that the weirdos who lived next to her had actually called a dobermann Snoopy, but they had. She’d long since given up trying to work them out, her neighbours; they seemed to be quite normal, even attractive, really, but what they used for brains was a mystery. They looked so incredibly normal, in fact, that it only made their wild parties of pounding Techno and similar music even harder to understand. It wasn’t that Kate particularly disliked the music; some of it wasn’t bad at all, in her opinion, but why on earth her neighbours had to broadcast it to the whole suburb in the middle of the night was a bit beyond her. Holding her hands over her ears (as Snoopy’s penetrating bark really hurt her sensitive hearing), Kate approached the simple mesh fence that separated her back yard from the neighbours. The stench of large-dog poo drifted over to her and she almost gagged. She wondered why it was that the dog had to crap everywhere. Her neighbours took Snoopy out every morning when they went jogging… That was another thing. They never seemed to suffer hangovers and in spite of their wild lifestyle they looked as trim and fit as a couple of models for an aerobics magazine. Life most definitely wasn’t fair, Kate considered. Her neighbours proved it. Still with her hands over her ears, Kate focused all her attention on the snarling dog, and speaking in a normal voice, she said, “Over you I tower,” and kept her gaze fixed on the animal as she imagined it growing smaller. The effect was immediate. The dog began to shrink down, so that in just a couple of seconds it was the size of a fox terrier and still getting smaller, and as it shrank its voice rose in pitch to a strange yipping, that changed in tone from outright rip-your-throat-out threat to doggish confusion to pure animalistic fear. Already, the beast had slipped its collar and was backing away from her, moving back until it thudded softly against its kennel. Kate smirked and forced herself to stay focused, and her smile broadened as the dog shrank down smaller, ever smaller, until it was getting very hard to see in the dim glow of the porch light twenty yards away. “Perfect,” she breathed, smoothing her long dark hair back from her face as she squatted down and balanced on the balls of her feet, peering into the gloom and watching the tiny animal as it moved into a submissive pose, lying on its back with its paws up. “Here, Snoopy,” she whispered, smiling her softest, most reasssuring smile as she reached out her hand. The dog knew her, for they had been neighbours for five years, and whimpering in its incredibly faint, high-piched voice (which sounded more like a strange, buzzing bug than anything), the dog crawled over the hard-beaten ground in front of its kennel, moving towards the girl as she spoke words of quiet, gentle encouragement, heaping more praise on the animal that it had probably heard in months of boring, backyard days. The miniature canine crawled towards her, the distance only a few feet but still a long way for a dog that was about an inch and a half long. Kate continued to whisper encouragement, watching and waiting for the moment when this rotten, idiot, vicious dog would be close enough for her to reach her small hand through one of the gaps in the fence and pick it up. She had no set plan for what to do with Snoopy when she caught him, but Kate figured that the emp! ty, plastic-walled mouse house in her room would do fine for now. Just as the girl judged her subject was close enough for her to grab him before he could scramble away, a door banged and drunken voices announced that her charming neighbours had returned home. Kate froze, and a second later the back porch lights came on and the screen door thudded open. “Snooooo-pyyyy!!” Myra Andrews bellowed in excellent Sergeant-Major tones, her blurred vision no doubt starting to focus in the general direction of the dog kennel. She spotted her teenaged neighbour just as the girl stood, and with a cheery “Hiya, Kate”, Myra staggered down the steps and began to weave her way across the yard, glass of red wine in one hand and box of dog food in the other. Kate forced a smile. “Hiya, Myra. Nice night, isn’t it?” “Perfect!!” her neighbour exclaimed, somehow not spilling a drop of red wine from the brimming glass she held. “Hot nights are great!” she added, completing a rather deft and well-balanced piourette that made her short skirt whirl up around her waist. Kate grinned, for it never ceased to amaze her that no matter how drunk Myra got (provided she wasn’t actually unconscious) she was never affected in her ability to dance. If she got dancing she was like Ginger Rogers in those old movies with Fred Astaire. It had to be those years of dance training she’d done. And because Myra was only about twenty-eight and had a great figure, she was frequently encouraged to dance at her parties, especially when she wore one of the little skirts she preferred in almost all weathers except a freezing gale (which wasn’t so common in Florida, after all). Doing another whirl then coming to a dead stop with her feet planted well apart, Myra allowed her flaring skirt to catch up, wrap itself around! her waist at belt level then sort of unwind and settle itself down again. Luckily Kate wasn’t a jealous type, for Myra’s underwear must have cost a few dollars and was far sexier than almost anything she had. “I love these great hot nights,” Myra tautologized. “So do I,” Kate agreed, because it was true and she had to say something. If you didn’t reply to Myra she tended to repeat herself yet again but several decibels louder. The teenager glanced down and noticed that Snoopy had obviously detected the arrival of his mistress – but then a blind, deaf mute would probably be hard pushed to remain unaware of her presence – and now the dog was crawling towards the woman as she stood there, still with her glass of wine in one hand and box of dog food in the other. Kate wondered if Myra might partake of the wrong one, but she still seemed focused enough to know what she was holding and even remembered why she was in the back yard. “Hey, you seen Snoopy?” Myra asked, peering into the semi-darkness where a leaping, joyful, slobbering killer carnivore should be exercising its neck muscles as it strained its anchor chain to the limit. “I can’t see him!” she added, totally needlessly. “Well, he was barking like crazy a little while ago, Myra,” Kate told her in all truthfulness. “I just came down to see if anyone was hanging around out front.” The girl kept an eye on the tiny dog as she did her best to maintain a straight face. “Looks like he’s slipped his collar.” “A-gain?” Myra exclaimed. She took a pace forward and after a detailed study of the collar lying fully closed on the ground, she nodded. “Yep. It sure looks like it. That damned dog!” Kate held her breath, for now Snoopy was actually crawling around Myra’s feet as she stood there, swaying a little from side to side and letting time slide by in irregular chunks like a bad CD player. “I – I guess he’ll be back soon enough, Myra. I don’t expect he’ll go far.” “Guess so,” she allowed, taking a slurp from her glass. “Damned dog…” Snoopy zeroed in on Myra’s right foot, and not knowing what else to do, he placed both his paws on her big toe and (Kate guessed) began licking. He usually either licked things or tried to dismember them. Kate’s heart began to pound as she realized that any second, even Myra would have to notice, and when she noticed, she’d look down, and when she saw him – “Jee-EEE-sus!” Myra seemed to jump about two feet in the air and about as far backwards and for a moment it looked like she would have to fall flat on her back. But she regained her balance – still without spilling any of her drink although a few Doggy-O’s went flying from the open box – and peering downwards, the woman struggled to focus on the tiny dog as he writhed around in the dirt. Obviously he wasn’t hurt much as he was flung clear by Myra’s sudden move, but Snoopy was clearly not a happy little animal. “Damned bugs!” the woman exclaimed. Before Kate could react or even say a word, Myra took a single step forward, raised her right foot until her knee was at breast level, lined up the tiny, squirming dog, and stomped on him. There was a juicy crunch as she crushed him flat, right beneath the centre of her sandal’s sole. “Gotcha!” she snarled, raising her heel and grinding her victim under her toes. “That’ll fix you, mister bug,” Myra added, continuing to mash Snoopy to a smear as she glanced up and commented, “I hate bugs, but gee, it sure feels good to squash ‘em, don’t it?” Kate forced a smile as she listened to the crunchy, squishing sounds. “Yes…It sure does,” she nodded, knowing you never disagreed with Myra when she’d had a few, which meant you never disagreed with Myra when she was conscious. “Specially big ones,” Myra agreed with herself, performing another incredibly accurate pirouette, this time on the flattened Snoopy. She came to a stop, let her skirt settle again, and moved her foot back. “Not much left of him now,” she announced, clearly pleased. The woman took another slurp and drained her wineglass, and without another word, turned and wandered off back across the lawn towards the house. It was a full minute before Kate could turn her gaze away from the dull stain in the dirt. It seemed incredible that just a few minutes ago, a full-grown dobermann had been snarling at her from the other side of the fence, and now, all that was left of Snoopy was a dark smudge and a few tiny fragments that the ants would clear away in just a few hours. “She stepped on him,” the girl whispered, torn between pity for the wretched dog and quiet relief that he’d never keep the street awake again. “She squashed him like a bug…” It had simply never occurred to her to step on the tiny dog, but by the time Kate turned away and began to walk slowly across her own well-kept lawn, she knew exactly what lay in store for a certain useless, drooling slob named David H. H. Williams. She went to her room and lay flat on her back on her bed, peacefully stroking her fingertips over herself as she liked to do and drifting, drifting blissfully even as she imagined what she would do tomorrow when she called up Mr D.H.H. Williams and invited him over. “I’m not rostered on tomorrow, so why wait?” she murmured. “I’ll ask him over, then shrink him, and…Mmmm…” Originally, she’d just planned to keep him in a hamster cage or something, and play with him like a little pet – perhaps with the micro Snoopy as his pet. “But not now,” the girl smiled to herself. “Now,” she breathed, “Now that I know how easy it is…How really easy it is…I have to step on him…Step on him and crush him… Yes… Crush him like a nasty fat crawling bug…” Kate sighed again and inhaled deeply as she imagined what it would be like when she stepped on tiny, nasty little David Williams, and later, when she slept that night, she drifted in a deep, blissful world of wonderful, feminine dreams. David H. H. Williams almost wet his pants when Kate called him late the next morning. (She knew they always went to church early on Sunday.) His jaw dropped when his mother called him into the living room and let him know that she – the most gorgeous girl in the whole college – was on the phone and asking for help with her physics assignment. “Of course, I know it’s hard for you to explain it to me over the phone, David. Would you mind coming over and showing me how to get the answers? Mum’s not here so there’s nobody I can ask…” He knew that Kate’s mother was a widow and that as a nurse she often worked weekends, so if Kate said she was alone that meant she was really alone. And inviting him over! “Ah – sure, Kate. I’d – I’d be glad to help.” After consulting with his mother, David agreed to come over after lunch, and he could feel Kate’s smile though the phone as she said, “That’s so nice of you, David. I’m really looking forward to seeing you…” When the doorbell rang at exactly two pm, Kate was most definitely looking forward to seeing David Williams. And because she wanted to be fair, she made sure that he would enjoy the meeting, too – at least at first. She had showered, brushed her long hair until it gleamed while she recited the spell and prepared the key line in her mind, then dressed with meticulous care in a soft pink pleated mini skirt over pure white high-cut panties (finely embroidered with pastel pink flowers) a sleeveless white silk blouse over a light bra, and open-toed strappy sandals to match her skirt. Yes, she thought, admiring herself in her full-length mirror, I should do very nicely. She heard the bell, and smiling before she even got the door open, greeted her first human experimental shrinking subject with all the insincere warmth a nineteen-year-old woman can bring to bear on one unsuspecting twenty-year-old man. Williams stood there for about three seconds with his mouth hanging open before he remembered himself and closed his gaping trap. He managed to utter a polite reply and felt Kate’s fingers almost burning through his freshly-ironed shirt as she took a quick look around to make sure no-one had witnessed his arrival then ushered him inside and got the door shut as fast as was decent. Kate stood with her back to the door, her feet a little apart as she beamed and asked, “Do you like my outfit? I wore it – I wore it just for you, David.” Beads of sweat formed on the young man’s brow as he tried to visualize what panties she was wearing under that incredible little skirt. “Really? Wow…You look fu – I mean – you look fabulous, Kate. Really awesome.” “Thank you,” she grinned, thinking that in a few seconds she would look even more awesome. Then she tilted her head a little to one side, beamed her best smile and pronounced softly, “Over you I tower.” The girl kept right on smiling as she watched David Williams shrink down before her. She was pleased but not too surprised to see that the spell shrunk his clothes as well, and the clunk of his briefcase hitting the floor as he grew smaller and gaped at her wordlessly was loud in the otherwise silent room. By the time his open mouth began to produce an incoherent scream, he was so small that it was just barely audible to her. Just as had happened with the dog, his voice rose in pitch as it diminished in volume, and by the time he had reached a very satisfactory height of a bit under two inches and she halted the process, it was only a tiny squeak. Kate decided that it suited him perfectly. She squatted down and leaned forward a little to peer at him. “I hope you like the view,” she said, her tones mild. “Nod if you do.” Williams was too stunned to do anything but obey. The giantess told him to nod, so he did, not even aware that he’d peed his pants for real this time. Fortunately it had only just happened, so he didn’t leave a wet puddle of piss for the girl to clean up. Kate smirked as she watched the tiny man nodding. “That’s good. I’d be pretty upset if you didn’t like it. After all…” She swung her thighs open to improve his view. “Panties like these don’t come cheap, you know. See that embroidery?” She touched her fingertips on the smooth flatness and Williams watched as they sunk in a little way. “It’s all done by hand…” The girl stood and absently smoothed her skirt as she stood with her feet a little apart and looked down at the minute figure standing right between her sandals. “Yes, it must be quite a view for a teeny little man…Even for a fat slob little man like you.” Williams’ eyes filled with tears as he leant back to look up at the girl. She was impossibly tall, so tall that to her, he knew, he must look like some kind of bug. “Please,” he whimpered, “Please, Kate…Please don’t hurt me…” As he began to stagger backwards away from her, Kate felt a sudden, familiar urge come over her. It was the urge to crush, the urge to step on this loathsome, creeping thing and destroy him, feel him flatten and crunch beneath her weight. She began to raise her right foot and bring it up over the tiny man, but because she had great self-control (and because he was standing on her mother’s best rug), she resisted the urge to crush Williams where he stood. Instead, she set her foot down right next to him with a thump that sent a shudder right through him and reached down, smiling with quiet amusement as she easily caught the little man before he could perhaps run away and crawl under the furniture. It was solid, heavy furniture and she didn’t relish the idea of trying to move it to catch a tiny fugitive male. David Williams had screamed as he watched her foot lift and he took in the fact that the girl was bringing it up and over him. Petrified with disbelief, he gaped up at wavy pattern on the sole; he even noticed with gut-wrenching horror that there were the remains of two or three insects squished up deep into the grooves, small creatures trodden and squashed flat under this giant girl’s pretty, summery sandal as she’d strolled through her garden that morning and stepped on them without even being aware of their existence. He screamed even louder in mind-blown terror as the girl’s foot thumped down beside him, then his voice broke and squealed like a damaged machine as her hand reached down and her fingers closed around him. His struggled and beat against them with his fists, he clawed at them and wept and wailed as he tried to kick his legs, but he could feel the incredible power in her grasp and he knew that this gently smiling girl could easily crush him in her hand without! any effort at all. The floor fell away as he rose into the air, and moments later the young man found himself staring into the beautiful eyes of a girl who hated him with the true passion that only vengeful women have. “Gotcha, little man. Now it’s payback time,” she told him. Without another word of explanation, Kate went through the house and opened the door onto the back porch. She walked down the steps and went through her garden until she found the place she’d decided would be ideal for her purposes. It was a smallish, bare patch of ground by one of the larger trees, kept clean and free of even the odd twig by the ants that filed through on their way to God knew where. Stooping down, Kate placed David Williams on the ground in the centre of the bare patch and stood for a few seconds, rocking her hips gently from side to side and looking down at him as she savoured her power. He staggered and fell to his knees, then as the girl began to raise her right leg, watching him all the while, the minuscule man rolled over onto his back and lifted both his arms in a useless, defensive gesture. “No! No, you can’t! No No No No NOOOOooooooo….” Kate heard his faint little cries and although she couldn’t quite make out his words, she had a fair idea what he was saying. But the girl saw no point in actually answering him. After all, she was like a goddess to him, and since when did a goddess have to explain her actions to tiny, insect-sized little men? Instead, she just smiled and said softly, “Bye bye, little bug-man…It’s time for this girl to squash you…” Kate watched her tiny man closely as she lowered her foot over him. He was her first one and she wanted to remember every second. She lined him up with perfect feminine precision so he was exactly centred beneath the nice, hard, patterned sole of her cute little pale pink sandal, and just as she pinned him under her foot and he was lost to view she wondered if he’d noticed that she’d even painted her toenails to match. The thought made her grin and she suppressed a giggle. While Williams hadn’t picked up on such fine details as her toenail varnish, he was actually taking a great deal of notice of her sandal. Well, her sandal’s sole, anyway. After all, it was resting on him, and the wavy, grooved pattern was already impressing deep bruises all over his chest, and as the pressure built and he felt his ribs creak, the man just suddenly wanted it all to be over. It was bad enough to be only two inches tall, it was even worse to be trapped under the sandal of a beautiful giantess, and worse still to know that in just a moment, this girl was going to crush him to a horrible death – like a bug. He had seen this girl step on a bug once and as he scrabbled at her sandal’s sole, tearing his fingernails, the image filled his tortured mind… Williams had been resting under a tree, well shaded and almost invisible as he ogled girls walking through the park. Then she had come along and paused only twenty feet away from him as she answered a call on her cell phone. She stood there, just idly glancing down and moving her feet a little this way and that and seeming to study her toes as girls do, when something caught her eye and she walked forward a pace or two, looking down. Then Williams noticed a rather large, brown, rotund beetle lumbering around in a ragged circle. Kate smiled to herself and he watched, fascinated, as she trapped the bug right under her toes and pressed down daintily, wrinkling her nose in delighted girlish disgust as she crushed it flat…It had turned him on more than any other girl’s smiling little furtive crush had ever done, and now – now, he was just! like that bug, and even as the agony built and the pressure grew ever greater, David Williams imagined that the giant girl was smiling as she pressed him under her beautiful, sparkling toes… Kate grinned as she heard the tiny man emit his stupid little sounds. She sighed, and wanting to draw it out as much as possible (although the urge to squish him right now was just incredible), the girl eased her foot up a little and moved it aside, swivelling her sandal around on the heel. Williams moaned and sobbed as he rolled onto his side and curled up as much as a very obese twenty-year-old can. His whole body was an avalanche of pain, and he knew that she had used very little pressure – perhaps only a few ounces of the mass she had available. The girl nudged her little man with the tip of her sandal’s toe, smiling to herself as he rolled right over and flailed his arms and legs about. He finished on his stomach and somehow got his limbs coordinated enough so that he could crawl. So, he crawled, and Kate giggled as she teased him, dabbing her toes down in front of him, making him turn. She never let him get very far, and if he seemed to build up too much speed a quick flick was all it took to bring him back where she wanted him. Finally, when Kate saw that he was exhausted and could crawl no more, she placed her foot over him once more. This time, she didn’t let him go. The girl pressed her foot down slowly and smoothly, her mouth slightly open as she sought to catch every tiny nuance of delicious sound as she crushed the fat little man under her best, most expensive pink sandal. When he crunched, Kate felt an amazing, tingling surge rush through her. It seemed to come up through the sole of her shoe, as if she wa! s literally crushing his life energy out of him and sucking it into her own body. “Mmmmm….Crussshhh,” she breathed, raising her heel and bringing more weight to bear on the little man’s body. Then, as his bones simply shattered and his body flattened out beneath her foot until it could withstand no more, there was a lusciously juicy, gratifying skissshhhh, and Kate closed her eyes and clutched the hem of her skirt in both hands, gyrating her hips as she ground the man beneath her toes and literally squished him up deep into her sandal’s grooves. “Just like a bug….Mmmmm….Ohhhh, yessss….” It was even better than she had thought it would be. Late that Sunday evening, Kate lay on her bed, holding her sandal in her hands as she stared at the sole. “Squished you,” she breathed, tracing a fingertip over the pattern and smiling to herself. “No more Mr Nasty Guy…” A sudden, massively loud but regular thumping sound shook her from her reveries, and after a few seconds Kate let out a groan as she realized her neighbours had decided that ten-thirty on a Sunday night was a great time to start a party. “Ohmigod…On a Sunday night! This is just too much…” The girl exhaled resignedly and slumped back on her pillows, her eyes closed, then a slight smile flickered and her eyes opened again as she decided that she would pay her neighbours a visit and put a stop to their thoughtlessness – once and for all. Sliding around and sitting on the edge of her bed, she strapped on her sandals, then as she began to walk towards her bedroom door while the cacophany seemed to grow still louder, Kate paused and turned her head a little to look at a very old, sepia photograph on her dresser. She sighed softly, a loving sigh, and her voice a light, feminine whisper, she said simply, “Thanks, Grandma.” Kate left her room and walked with measured, determined steps to her front door, confident that tonight – and every night from now on – she would sleep in peace and quiet. THE END