Scott Stevens was falling.

            In the darkness he held his eyes shut and his teeth clamped together to avoid biting his tongue.  His arms were crossed over his chest solemnly, as though he’d been arranged in a coffin for burial, his legs straight and his breaths only in rare intervals where it became necessary.  A pair of white boxers was all that clothed him, along with the form-hugging ankle bracelet used to keep track of his movements.

            Besides that, he was adrift in his mind.  Primal.

            It felt to him like being a resident of Deep 6.  All that surrounded him was nothingness.  A void.  He could exist on his own merit, whatever that may be.  Nothing was there and nothing could touch him.

            Scott was an island.  Content and alive.

            Convincing himself of this wonderful illusion was the only oasis the three-inch-tall young man really had in between pulverizing slams from his younger sister Maggie’s sweat-drenched toes as he remained pinned under her steamy socks in the tip of her soccer cleat while she sprinted across the field.

            This wasn’t an irregular location for the twenty-one-year-old shrunken ward to find himself in Maggie had gleefully decided to start wearing her tiny brother in her shoes during scrimmages with the team earlier that month and it had already become a favored location of hers to store him.  He had almost gotten used to it by now, and had learned the requisite survival tactics to avoid coming out of the misadventure with more than a few swollen bruises.

            Still, this was the championship game, and Maggie was out for blood.  She had been competitive all her life, and the fact that she had a human being curled up like a lemming under her soused toes wasn’t going to impede her aggressive ferocity in the least.

            In fact, it was probably even more inspiring to her.

            The last three months of Scott’s life had been nothing short of a dive-bomb into heretofore unexplored depths of human mediocrity.  After drunk driving and nearly ending the life of a woman, and extinguishing her unborn child’s existence, Scott had been sentenced by a rabid public and bitter jury to indefinite imprisonment.

            With some maneuvering from his up-and-coming politician and lawyer mother Judy, however, he had dodged the bullet of prison and instead accepted an alternative bullet square in the eye: he was to be shrunken down to a height of one foot, or even less if his family so chose, and be placed under house arrest, legally compelled by any reasonable service request his caretakers made of him.

            His mother Judy Stevens had placed a lockdown on his entire existence.  The law already mandated that he only leave the house once a week, but otherwise, she ensured that Scott was an entity exclusive to the confines of her home.  Every day was spent with him at her general disposal on whatever chores she could come up with, and when she ran out of things for him to do, he could usually manage to snatch a few minutes of tortuously paranoid free time before his sister found him and took her turn.  He had no computer access and could only use the television if there was no work to be done and no one else wanted to use it.  His bedroom had been converted into a storage closet, leaving him to sleep on the living room couch with nowhere to go for privacy.  There were no phone calls and no visitors either, though frankly the young man had his doubts anyone would want to take advantage of either option even if his mother allowed for them.

            And the first opportunity for parole was not for eleven months.

            So now he was here, with the full support of the judicial system and the American public, stuffed into the shoe of his sixteen-year-old sister as she pounded the pitch in pursuit of her teammates.

            Blonde, popular, and an increasingly stellar athlete, Maggie had benefited perhaps more than anyone else out of the novel custody arrangement.  Slightly short for her age and unhappy with it, she instantly became a towering titan in the presence of her older brother, and had never been shy about letting him know.  This legal decree had only cemented her ability to lord over him whenever she pleased.

            She took particular delight in personally stripping him down to his underwear like a doll and waving goodbye to him at the bottom of her cleat as she reared the maleficent form of her over-eager foot above him, usually already glistening with a glazing of sweat before it even managed to mold itself around his papery body.

            It was getting harder and harder for Scott to convince himself he was floating in his private nothingness as his little sister’s steps became slower.  She paused where she stood to assess the situation on the field.

            Her sock, colored a festive yellow for the team’s jerseys, coddled his body oppressively from all sides.  The stench was omnipresent, foggy and tangible in its sticky haze, and though Scott had trained himself to absorb as little of the odor as possible while trapped in these gulag conditions, there was no real escaping it when Maggie’s toes were affixing him down like this to the worn-out base of the shoe.

            The writhing weight of them absolutely immersed him in their essence.  Salt, sharp and cutting in its tang, but also the aroma of muddy earth and the girl’s water-pruned flesh met his senses and walloped them.

            It was the absolute epitome of human musk, unforgiving and unapologetic.

            Just like Maggie herself.

            The thick fibers of the sock soaked up the pungent floods of sweat like a sponge, and Maggie was not one to hold back, especially for the championship game.  When Maggie laid her toes down upon Scott, letting the sock bury him in an avalanche of squelching cotton, it was like being submerged in a wading pool while wound up in a burlap sack.

            No room to escape, no room to breathe, and barely room to exist.

            The volume of moisture was unrelentingly cruel, dribbling in cold rivulets from between the fit teen’s massive, swollen toes and pooling around the base of the shoe before sopping up into the insole, and into Scott himself.

            Given how Scott was positioned so that his body was stretched under all five of his sister’s wriggling digits, he didn’t miss much of the action.

            His hair was a matted mess, his underwear was dampened through, and Maggie’s partially dried foot sweat was caked in a gummy film across every square inch of his body.  It was her loving signature on her favorite doll.

            It made him itch from every angle, particularly where sweat had soaked through his boxers and made its way under his crotch, but he dared not move to scratch.  At any moment, Maggie could take off running again, sending him slamming back and forth under the heft of her toes and the squishy floor of the cleat, and he would be forced to flop around at her random mercy in the violent darkness until she held still again and he could get his bearings.

            He had learned this the hard way on several occasions, at least three of them already during this game.  Well into the second half and with the score tied, he wasn’t taking any chances on moving again.  He just had to hold it, close his eyes, and let himself re-enter the isolation of the blackness.

            The beautiful bliss of being alone in his mind.

            “Hey little loser,” Maggie snickered as she knocked the heel of her removed cleat against her wrist, letting her brother tumble awkwardly toward the light at the end of the dark, smelly tunnel.

            Scott jerked back into full consciousness, blinking in the harsh dying sunlight.  He hadn’t even realized his sister had taken her foot off of him and out of the cleat.  The coach had apparently called a last-minute timeout, and Maggie had found some privacy from the crowd on a bench behind a storage shed to remove her shoe.

            With a sigh of pitifully undeserved optimism, Scott decided he must’ve been improving at his technique of blocking out reality.

            He rolled off the lip of the scuffed black cleat and landed in her soft, expectant palm like the prize at the bottom of the cereal box.  Righting himself as she cupped him closer to her enormous and inescapable face for examination, he realized his boxers had started slipping down his thighs in the downward shuffle.  He quickly grasped the waistband in his fingers and tugged it higher, although they were still squalidly drenched from the salty wash he’d received under Maggie’s busy toes, and the feeling was wildly unpleasant at best.

            It was Scott’s desperate wish to remove his boxers at the earliest possible second and wash himself off for some relief from the itching, stickiness, and abysmal feminine BO that had been stamped and soaked all over him.  Of course, as he gazed up at Maggie’s laughing blue eyes, her grin barely holding back a cackle at the sight of him sprawled in her hand, he knew there was no way in hell that would happen.  Not willingly.  He still had his pride.

            Somewhere.

            He was pretty sure he did, at least.

            “Eww, you weirdo!” Maggie snarled with false disgust, wrinkling her nose cutely at the sight of the tiny young man in his soaked underwear.  “Did you pee your little panties?”

            “Boxers,” Scott corrected under his breath.

            “What?” Maggie snapped cheerfully, though her tone was forceful.

            “I said… I said I didn’t.  I promise,” he said more loudly, averting his gaze.

            “I guess it is pretty wet down there, isn’t it?” she seemed to concede, peeking with one eye open into the end of the shoe, before quickly withdrawing her face from the opening and coughing loudly.  “Wow.  Okay, I guess kinda smelly too, huh?  But what can I say?  It’s the championship, and they need me doing work out there!”

            “I guess they do, don’t they?” Scott answered neutrally, with just a touch of encouragement to appease her.

            “You look pretty uncomfortable with your undies like that,” she cooed with sudden gentleness and care sweetening her words.  She tilted her head as though affectionately examining an adored pet.

            Scott knew that in his sister’s eyes, this was just about as high an honor as he was going to receive.

            She brought the tip of her finger under Scott’s chin and lifted it just enough to make him look directly at her looming face again.  “Do you want to take them off?” she chuckled, the familiar calculating smile returning to her lips.

            “Well?  Are you taking your itty bitty undies off, or not?” Maggie repeated to her defeated captive.  A wildly coy smile broke across her lips again at her suggestion, sickening Scott.  He knew it brought Maggie endless joy to humiliate him like this.

            Technically, she didn’t even need his permission to remove his clothes forcibly.  She could, according to the law, tug the boxers off his thrashing little body at this very moment and leave him completely in the nude under her naked pink toes, and no one could say otherwise.

            She could, but she wouldn’t.  That wasn’t enough.

            She would want him to do it for her, forcing him to stew in that subservient act, in addition to literally stewing in the muggy hellhole of her sweaty cleat.

            “I… um…” Scott drawled slowly, wanting so badly to get the slick feeling of the toe sweat-soaked underwear to stop hugging against his clammy skin.  But to do so would require him to strip willingly in the palm of his little sister’s hand, something he just wasn’t quite willing to do at this moment, or ever.

            “C’mon,” she whispered even more coolly, bringing her cupped hand closer to her lips until Scott could feel the wind from her warm breath swirling around him in the upturned dome of her creamy palm.  “You’ll feel so much better.”

            “I’d… I’d rather not,” Scott coughed, moving his head away from Maggie’s gargantuan finger as it curled under the crook of his neck, as though she were tickling the chin of a baby.

            “I’ll do it for you if you’re still too shy around your big sissy for some reason,” she whispered in a hush under her breath so quietly that only someone of Scott’s size could’ve picked it up.

            He gulped, slowly shaking his head no.

            The tip of her finger moved from under his chin and pawed gently at the leg of his tiny boxers.  Her fingernail slid its way under the waistband, threatening to strip him down the rest of the way with just a flick of her wrist.  She was obviously more than willing.

            “Are you sure you don’t want me to?”

            “I’m sure,” Scott affirmed quickly, uncomfortable enough as it was.

            His sister always found enormous humor in making him strip, just like she did in every aspect of toying with his helpless tiny body.  Still, there was a particular fascination she had with this specific act that made him pray harder than ever that it was only immature personal amusement she had in mind and nothing more perversely sinister.

            “All right, suit yourself, you little prude,” she said with a shrug, her tone returning to the casual note of before as though nothing had happened.  She had still won, of course, by forcing him to remain in the damp and itchy garments, and they both knew it.  True to her word a month before, she was indeed letting him occasionally make choices for himself while under her supervision, though as per usual, neither choice was particularly desirable.

            “Thank you,” Scott said quickly and clearly.  He had been making efforts to stay on Maggie’s good side as much as possible recently to ease his burden in her playful hands, though he had the unfortunate suspicion that a few pleases were doing little to sway the girl.

            In the long run, he hoped to apologize to Maggie for the differences they’d had in years past, but as he’d discovered a month before, her forgiveness was not so forthcoming, when she’d responded to his most heartfelt apology by promptly depositing him into her shoe and going on a long walk with her friends.

            “Whatever.  So I’ll tell you what,” she answered eagerly, leaning further forward on the metal bench she had found on the sidelines while the rest of her team rested momentarily by the water cooler.  “I’ll give you a break. You don’t have to go under my sock again for the rest of the game.”

            Scott knew this little trick all too well.  He had fallen for it an embarrassing number of times in his shrunken life, mostly due to a stupid little emotion he clung to so pathetically called hope.

            “Right.  So don’t you have to take the sock off now before I go back in?” Scott nonchalantly asked, not caring in the least at this moment what it cost him.

            Maggie’s jubilant face quickly devolved into a disappointed frown.  It was a small victory, but it was something, at least.  He’d robbed her of any additional glee.

            “Oh, you just think you’re so freaking funny, don’t you?” she grumbled, not angrily, but visibly irritated.

            Maggie leaned toward the ground to reach for something.  Scott assumed she was grasping for the cleat so she could insert him back inside before the time-out ended, but she was taking too long to be doing that.  He turned his head to watch her fingers pinching around the toe of her yellow knee-high.

            With effort, she unpeeled the sock from her foot.  Vibrant and peachy, it emerged from the cottony hovel like a creature from the earth, hungry for prey.  Her toes stretched forth, kissed by the cool air in between the fleshy crevices, and her sole arched majestically, the wrinkles in the rosy underside rippling powerfully with each pulse.

            The patterned rivets of the lined sock fibers were imprinted as swollen stripes along her ankle and the top of her foot.  Dotted clusters of sock fiber were glued at spots all along her shin and instep.  Several juicy clumps of toe jam peeked ominously from between her punishing teenage toes.

            “You think you’ve got me and my cute little toesies all figured out, don’t you?” Maggie accused, though despite the aggression in her words, she was unable to hide her enraptured anticipation.  “Don’t forget who’s standing on who here.  Now we’re gonna have to kick it up a notch or two.”

            Scott hardly had more than a moment to stare with muted horror at what he now realized was coming before his sister’s cupped palm was tipping over.  He slipped over the side and gasped, entering tinted darkness, with a bouncy pointed fate at the end.

            The walls of his sister’s used yellow sock became narrower and darker as he descended quickly into the wet, cottony prison and rolled along the rancid base of it.  It was impossible to stand up as Maggie dangled her sock above the ground, so he instead laid on his back and held his arms over his head for protection from the inevitable.

            “Incoming!” Maggie sang out into the opening of the now-occupied sock.

            Not that he needed the warning.  He clamped his eyes shut, tightened his muscles, and curled back into his normal fetal position just as the scraping sound of Maggie’s toenails catching on the thready tunnel met his ears.

            “Hey Mags,” a feminine voice sang out suddenly, slightly short of breath still.  “You get a rock in your shoe or something?”

            “You could say that, Libs,” Maggie laughed, pausing suddenly in pulling the yellow fabric tube taut onto her leg, allowing her brother a few added moments to gaze up at the sight of his looming soon-to-be sockmate.

            “Oh.  Wait,” the girl continued hesitantly, who Scott now recognized as his sister’s friend and teammate Libby Hammond from the nickname and tenor of the voice.  “Are you…”

            “Yeah?”

            “Are you putting your… brother in there… again?”

            “Uh-huh,” snorted Maggie liltingly.  “Just changing him out real quick and then I’ll be ready to get back out there, I swear.”

            “Does he… really have to be in there again?  Haven’t you been wearing him…”

            “…all game,” chuckled the triumphant teenage queen.  “He’s doing pretty well at it, though.  He’s had a lot of practice.  Trust me.  Don’t even worry about him.”

            “Your mom doesn’t care?  You know, about…”

            “Oh, she kinda does, I guess.  She usually only lets me wear him for scrimmage so nobody steps on my foot.  But you’ve seen me; I can move my feet so no one gets too close.”

            “Doesn’t it… hurt him, though?  To be in there that long?”

            “Probably a little.  He’ll get over it, though; he’s a big boy.  Plus, he’s my good luck charm,” Maggie insisted as sincerely as possible.  “And I would never let anything happen to my good luck charm.”

            “Um.  Oh… okay.  If… if you’re sure he can… you know…” Libby hesitantly mumbled.

            “He’s fine.  Don’t think about it.  By the way, you’re still coming by Monday, right?”

            “What?  I… um, yeah, sure.  Totally.  I’m there.”

            “Sweet.  See ya back on the field, girly,” Maggie mused with a giggle and a jokingly blown kiss to Libby, whose reluctantly slow footsteps faded off in Scott’s ears as she returned to the rest of the team.  Despite the position he found himself in at this moment, he couldn’t help but feel a little shiver of optimism.

            It was no secret that Libby had had something of a puppy crush on him ever since she was thirteen, though the age gap had made her far too hesitant to try anything, particularly given how shy she was.  Now, however, whenever she’d visit Maggie after the living arrangements had changed and brought back the shamed twenty-one-year-old, Scott could usually count on some slightly kinder treatment than he could expect from his mother or sister.  He wasn’t sure anymore if it was Libby’s oddly misguided feelings for her friend’s brother, or simply basic decency that made her treat him so well, but he didn’t care, as any reprieve from his bitter existence at the mercy of his family was usually good news.

            It had become a habit to instantly dread the mention that his sister’s friends were coming to visit, with the exception of Libby, who more or less gave him a brief vacation when she’d take him into her gentle hands with a scold at Maggie, who allowed it simply because she found the girl’s crush on the tiny inmate to be such a vast source of entertainment.

            Libby still got quite a kick out of being able to hold the object of her admiration in her hands, and generally wound up hanging onto him for the better part of several hours depending on how long she was visiting, but seeing as she wasn’t squeezing him or depositing him into compromising places on her body, Scott couldn’t help but look forward to it, particularly given the alternatives.  Besides, she could usually be counted on for a bit of conversation that didn’t involve belittling him with every other word, so that was a plus as well.

            Scott couldn’t quite finish this joyfully forward-looking thought due to the heart-jolting sight of his sister’s shadowy appendage descending again when things were suddenly put in motion again.  It took only a few more seconds for Maggie’s foot to eat up the remaining balmy real estate of the sock, her bulbous toes meeting her brother’s body with bulldozing aplomb.

            In what was by now a normal occurrence, all Scott was required to do was survive while Maggie took full ownership of the physics of his tiny body.  She shifted her toes, positioning him to her liking, even flicking them back and forth over his limbs to test how steady he could hold himself under the doughy ceiling of her foot skin.  At this point in the game, he was flimsy at best.

            He hardly even flinched as his sister forced her socked foot back inside the cleat and stood up at the echoing bleat of the whistle for the final portion of the game to begin.

            “Game on, Scotty,” she shouted enthusiastically down to him before taking off running across the grass.

Compared to this, the first half of the game was a complete butterfly joyride with lollipops through the imaginary void Scott had constructed.

            Nothing was left to the imagination now.

            The wall of sopping sock fabric behind Scott’s back sucked him into the arched crevice formed by Maggie’s five toes being pressed together to make room so generously for his three-inch body.  He was sandwiched by heinous texture on all sides, nearly causing him to lose his carefully practiced composure of only breathing when necessary.

            Her toes welcomed him up against themselves, cooking him under their fleshy weight.  The sweat poured over him in spurting geysers, no longer impeded by the sock.

            It was absolute.

            In the darkness, under the rummaging terrain of his sister’s toes, he could feel his boxers sliding further and further down his legs again.  Before, he’d been under a frictionless mass of damp cotton and flowing sweat, allowing him to slip and slide with the flow of the action.

            Maggie’s toe prints had pull, though, and their barely perceptible ridges were plenty to tug at the thin pants of their tiny passenger and undress him without her even knowing or caring.

            He pressed his thighs together as tightly as he could to stop them from going further, but it was no use.  The boxers were already trying to ride over his crotch.  He didn’t want to have to release his arms from around his shoulders to fix them for fear of being tossed like a ragdoll again, but the situation was becoming direr.

            Just when he felt there was a good enough delay in Maggie’s long strides that he could make the move, his body was splayed under all the toes at once, which flattened awkwardly across his body, and his underwear slipped away into the thrashing darkness of the soccer star’s enormous sock.

            He was bare, raw, and now totally under the fresh mercy of his younger sister’s tyrannically sweating foot.

            The minutes melted into an immovable sludge.  His naked body was juggled under Maggie’s toes and continually bounced back into the arched ceiling of moist skin each time Scott’s body rebounded down against the tight knee-high.

            His protective mental void was impossible to reach again.  This time, he was stuck in the reality of being mashed again and again and again by a giant cackling sixteen-year-old girl’s doughy, moisture-slogged toes in a pounding rhythm of relentless strength.

            He had ridden in his family members’ shoes innumerable times before, of course, but this had to be the most violent escapade.  This wasn’t even just jogging.  This was full-on sprinting.  Every new step surprised Scott when he discovered he was still semi-coherent and capable of experiencing the stomach-churning leap.

            Each time Maggie’s foot slammed down into the ground he imagined the very earth being crushed under the spikes of her cleats and the heft of her toned thighs.  He knew it was impossible, but he could sense the quake of the ground, trembling under her unstoppable feminine frame, towering above all he knew and could fully understand at this insignificant size.

            Scott thought he understood what it felt like to be on the mental brink, but this was in a category of its own.

            This was a storm.

            This was a complete mindfuck.

            Every sickly breath he inhaled, already poisoned with the repugnant flavor and gummy sudor of his sister’s profusely dripping toes, was instantly robbed from his body as his entire torso was gut-punched from above by the fall of Maggie’s digits.

            Just when it seemed all his senses had been squelched from his abused little nude body, no inch of himself a stranger to the monstrous blackness of Maggie’s sock and ruthlessly mashing foot, he became aware of something new.

            High-pitched, screeching, clawing at his ears.  He he slammed his hands over the side of his head for relief from the sound, but it only swelled up against the ground and reverberated through his sister’s shoe.

            A sustained chirp, a scream, something with longevity and the capacity to shatter entire office buildings.  What was it?  The cries steadily formed inside his pounding skull into a battle cry, formidable and encouraging.

            A final thrust of Maggie’s foot with such force and speed seemed to propel Scott’s mind into a separate dimension, and then he entered immediate sleep.

            Scott awoke roughly to find himself snuggled into what felt like a tightly wound sleeping bag around his lower body, with a soft strap crossing over his chest.  The window right next to his face reflected his exasperated expression, and through it he could make out the sight of buildings and trees whizzing by.  Flinching awkwardly at the realization of no longer being smothered under his sister’s weighty foot flesh, he realized he was buckled in the baby seat on the passenger side of Maggie’s used car.

            “Get a grip, bro,” Maggie chimed snidely, glancing over at her brother from the driver’s seat as she slammed on the gas pedal to make a changing green light in time.  “You’re all strapped in.  You’re not going anywhere.”

            He was surprised to see his sister looking comparatively more person-sized from his perspective, as opposed to the mythically proportioned beast she had been earlier, meaning she had used the PMRD to grow him back to a foot tall.

            Frowning, then, Scott looked down at himself and had to keep from rolling his eyes as he realized the only article of clothing he had on was one of Maggie’s pungent yellow knee-high socks from the game.

            Noticing his awareness of the garment she’d chosen for him, Maggie fought back a chortle.  “Sorry,” she shrugged.  “You were out and I didn’t realize your undies fell off until I pulled my foot out and found them stuck between my toes.  And I didn’t really feel like reaching all the way to the bottom of my sock to get you out, so instead I just made you bigger right inside of it.”

            As uncomfortable as she’d made it for him to be wrapped snugly into the damp, odor-loaded socks that had been vigorously absorbing her toe juices less than an hour before, it was charitable, at least, of her to provide some cover for him at a foot tall, when his family jewels would be more embarrassingly visible to unwanted parties like her.

            Maggie could very easily, of course, have grown the underwear back to his size as well so he could use it, but he knew that was going to be out of the question.  She was enjoying herself too much.  And at least he had a way to keep from slipping out from under the seatbelt toward the floor, even if the whole humiliating contraption was decorated with bright colors and little pictures of cartoon airplanes.

            The baby seat had originally been Maggie’s idea.  Obviously.  His mother Judy had promised to keep Scott at his maximum height of twelve inches as long as he behaved, which presented problems when he needed to be taken out of the house on his once-a-week allotment, because sitting in her purse and rocking back and forth put him at the risk of breaking his neck if the car stopped too soon.

            So, in her apparently infinite efforts to find solutions that benefited her mad desires, Maggie had suggested lugging the old baby seat out of the attic.  The thing hadn’t seen use in years, and Judy seemed to take a glowing delight in strapping her eldest son carefully into it.

            She acted with incredible gentleness when tucking him under the straps.  In a manner more motherly than Scott had seen her act in a long while, she’d lay a hand on his chest to ensure the side of the coarse fabric strap didn’t give him a rug burn, then plant a light peck on the top of his head before brushing his cheek with her thumb and returning to her side of the car.  Although a little odd considering he was three years into adulthood, it was nice to be shown a little kindness here and there, and Scott was grateful for even the smallest reprieve.

            Maggie, being Maggie, tended to use the opportunity of strapping in her brother as a chance to see how tightly she could secure him without it presenting a health risk.  He could see the fiendish glint in her eye as she tugged on the belt stretched across his body.  When they’d arrive at whatever destination they were headed for, she would take her sweet time unfastening him so that she could enjoy the sight of his entrapped body locked into the rainbow-tinted baby seat as long as possible.  And of course, if she could help it, she’d do it in full view of any passerby.

            All things considered, though, this arrangement at twelve inches was infinitely preferable to the alternative, which would’ve entailed being body-slammed under Maggie’s hot post-game sole each time she so forcefully stepped on the gas pedal.  At sixteen, Maggie wasn’t the smoothest driver yet, and as Scott had experienced before, her foot tended to bounce on the gas pedal far more than was healthy, both as a considerate driver, and on Scott’s overall state as the unfortunate companion underneath it.  Luckily for him, Judy had insisted on her daughter refraining from wearing the unfortunate passenger while driving, which the girl had miraculously agreed to without much trouble.

            “We won the game, in case you were waiting to ask,” Maggie announced after a long pause, with nothing but the hum of the road under the tires adding a soundtrack.  “Libby got it from their forward and over to Claire, and then she crossed it to me and I made the goal.  It was flawless.”

            Scott nodded knowingly.  That must’ve been when he was briefly passed out.

            “And how are you feelin’ little cowboy?” she asked suddenly.

            Slightly surprised, Scott had to do a double take.  What did she care?  She’d just pounded on him for over an hour in her oldest pair of lucky cleats for the championship game and brought him a dozen times to the brink of a blackout before delivering the coup de grâce.  Why couldn’t she just let him be?

            “I, um…” Scott began, anxious of making a false move in his continued campaign to endear himself to his powerful sister.  “I’m fine.”

            “Really?” Maggie drawled disbelievingly, raising an accusing eyebrow.

            “Yeah.”

            “Because I know I kick pretty hard.”

            “I’m dizzy, I guess,” Scott corrected.

            “What, from the smell?” she giggled, returning her gaze fully to the road.

            “No, not that.  Just the, um, you know…” he said, swallowing hard.  “…the fainting and stuff.”

            Maggie shook her head, as though she’d been asked a true/false question with a definitive answer.  “You just haven’t gotten used to it yet, that’s all.  I remember when you were like fourteen and you used to freak out when I just wanted to put you in my sock and walk around on you really gently inside the house.  You used to kick and scream the whole time I did it like a little baby.  And now look at you!  Being there for your big sissy on the night of the championship game.”

            “Yeah, I guess,” sighed Scott, knowing the matter was closed.

            “Don’t worry,” she added with a wink.  “We’ll get you some more practice tonight.”

            “Tonight?” Scott croaked, wincing at the thought of it.

            His brief nightly respites were the only way he was able to keep himself from keeling over due to exhaustion during the long days under the employ of his sister, mother, and her friends.

            “Yeah.  I figured you get lonely sleeping in your little puppy bed on the living room couch, so I thought I’d give you some company for the night.”

            “Oh.”

            “I bought these new blue fleecy socks.  They’re so soft and warm.  You’ll like being inside them.”

            “I…”

            “You cool with that?”

            “Um…” Scott gulped, knowing there wasn’t really an option but that agreeing willingly would win him brownie points, the word absolutely killing him regardless: “Yes.”

            “Awesome, then it’s a thing now,” Maggie cheered with an eager grin.  “I also got some strawberry lotion, so I’ll spread a little on my toes before I wear you, just so they smell extra nice for you.  Just one thing: I don’t want you getting my new socks all gross since you were in my cleats for ninety minutes.  We’ll have to give you a bath first.”

            “But…”

            “It’s just common courtesy, Scott.  You don’t touch someone’s new clothes after you’ve gotten all sweaty.  You know that, right?”
            “Right,” Scott sighed, already wishing for another spontaneous blackout so he could avoid being conscious for the rest of what sounded like a damnable evening.  “But does it have to be a bath?  Can’t I clean up some other way?”

            The sixteen-year-old chuckled at this as she turned the car wheel all the way, making a sharp right onto their block.  “Like what?  You wanna be shower buddies?” she asked quietly.

            Trying not to shudder too visibly, Scott shook his head resolutely.  “No, that’s not what I meant, really.  I just meant I can do it myself.  The wash.”  He wrapped his arms around the belt strap as the car bumped on the curb on the way up the driveway, hoping against hope he could win this one.

            “Don’t be ridiculous, Scott,” Maggie scolded jokingly, though her intent was serious.  She put the car in park and slowly sauntered around the garage toward the passenger side to let her brother out of his carriage.  “It would take forever for you to work the faucets and get the soap bubbles going yourself.  Besides, I haven’t gotten to clean you myself yet.  It’ll be a fun little first experience for both of us, won’t it?”

            “Uh-huh,” Scott gawked hollowly as his sister dramatically undid each strap, letting her fists press down against his chest for emphasis with each undoing of a buckle.  “Fun.”

            “Don’t be such a baby again.  I thought you were supposed to be twenty-one,” she said piteously after he’d been freed from the colorful seat.  “It’s called getting to know each other better.”

            Reaching forward, then, Maggie gripped him with both hands, one palm pressed against his chest, and her other wrapped around the sock concealing his legs.  She lifted him as easily as a baby doll from his plastic perch and hugged him into her jersey, squeezing him hard against her ample left breast and clearly not uncomfortable with it in the slightest as she headed into the house.

            Scott was itching now more than ever to be put down on the ground and left to his own devices, if only for a few minutes.  It was the only hope he had, considering his evening was about to consist of being forcibly bathed, followed by a sleepless night of being worn in his sister’s fleecy socks.

            He’d already spent the better part of this night being trodden into a brain-dead lump inside Maggie’s cleats, and now he found himself being firmly embraced as she cradled him against her breasts and carried him inside the house like a helpless infant.

            As he shifted against her shirt, he became aware that his sibling must’ve removed her sports bra in the locker room before leaving, because he could feel her nipple through her jersey nudging earnestly against his shoulder.  This was a practice she didn’t shy from, as she was still young enough that gravity hadn’t become an issue even without one on.  He tried to ignore it, but it was difficult, especially the longer Maggie pressed him against her shirt, because he swore he could feel it firming up from the contact.

            It was an involuntary action, he knew, but all the same, this moment couldn’t end soon enough.

            Like clockwork, Maggie had chosen to take the most ponderous pace for their entrance to the house.  She moved only one foot at a time very carefully as though walking on eggshells across the garage.  Scott could only imagine the bruises he’d have been spared this night if she had walked on him with such care when she had him gingerly stowed away under her warm toes.

            When they reached the kitchen of the Stevens household, Scott felt Maggie’s hand pressing itself against his chest again to grip him so he could be set down.  To his sinking dismay, though, he felt her secondhand knee-sock he’d been using as pants on the way home steadily slipping off his legs as she stripped it from him with her other hand, leaving him at a foot tall and totally naked in her grasp, save for the ankle bracelet.

            She quickly set him down on the floor before her, though, whereupon he threw one hand over his exposed junk and gazed up meekly at Maggie, who had placed her hands on her hips, her toned legs separated in a stance of aggressive intimidation.

            Not that she really needed the extra boost, though, given that her brother’s head only reached partially up her shin.

            Teasingly, the hand that had stolen the sock dangled it at arm’s length between two fingers.  Scott reached up uselessly as she offered the knee-high far too much above his head for him to grab, even with a running jump.

            His cheeks blushed a deep red against his best intention to keep cool.  He couldn’t believe how desperately he wanted to climb back into his sister’s gigantic soccer sock still soaked with sweat and stained with grass clippings, and yet here he was reaching pleadingly up at her for it.  As much as he loathed the thing with every fiber of his being, at this moment, it was better than nothing.

            And nothing was all he had.

            “What’s the matter, little boy?” Maggie chuckled.  “You want some help with something?”

            Swallowing hard enough to hurt his throat, Scott nodded.

            “Well, what could it be?” she continued.

            “Please,” he deadpanned.  “Can I have it back?”

            “Have what back?” she simpered.  “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you want.”

            “The sock,” he managed to croak.  “Please?”

            “My sock?” Maggie answered with false surprise.  “What do you want with my sock?”

            “I want…” Scott breathed, choking back a quaver in his voice.  “I want to put it back on.  Please.”

            “Awww.  Sorry, Scotty, but this thing is so gross.  I wouldn’t dream of letting you get back inside.  No, I think you’ll be fine down there in your birthday suit.”

            Maggie giggled incessantly, savoring the defeated look on her brother’s face as he slumped involuntarily into a seated position on the ground before her mighty feet.  It’s not like she would’ve look at him any differently whether he stood or sat.

            Still, he kept his hand over his crotch.  It didn’t matter to him how often she’d actually seen him fully bare.  Any shred of dignity he could hold onto this evening was a blessing he didn’t intend to squander.

            “Tell you what, though,” Maggie winked.  “Since you asked so nice, I’m sure we can hook you up with something later.”

            “Great,” he shrugged without even looking back up.

            “Really, though, I don’t understand the whole thing with you getting embarrassed in front of me, Scott,” Maggie confessed at length while casually balling the sock up into her fist.

            Scott actually felt his heart sink at this sight, and then sink again when he realized just how disappointed he was to be definitively deprived of the chance to clamber back into his sister’s sock.

            “You can’t surprise me anymore.  With your body, I mean.  It’s time you started feeling comfortable around me, no matter how much you’re showing, now that you’re staying back home.  And we’re gonna fix that, right after I shower.  Don’t go too far, okay?” Maggie instructed, bounding out of the kitchen toward the hallway stairs, before halting suddenly in the doorframe and turning to glance one more time down at her foot-tall brother cowering nakedly on the tile floor.

            “Besides, you shouldn’t be embarrassed,” she shrugged, tapping on the edge of her lip with her pointer finger thoughtfully and brushing her golden hair off her forehead with the other hand.  “I know some people who would want a piece of your Mini Scott if you weren’t a little shrimp right now.”  With a final sly smirk, she disappeared upstairs.

            When his sister was well out of sight and sound, Scott couldn’t help but tremble with combined fear and disgust at the implication.  A matter of months ago, he couldn’t have imagined her speaking to him like that with such boldness and disregard for any kind of social boundary, even if she was only joking at his and her friend Libby’s expense.

            It was clear barriers were no longer important to her.

            And they didn’t need to be.

            There was no denying how Maggie was changing.  She was sixteen now and would be seventeen before the calendar year was out.  Her hair was longer, her body had been sculpted thanks to her soccer training, her mind was sharper and better primed for mature knowledge; more significantly, though, she was really coming into her sense of self as a confident, autonomous woman who just happened to have access to her own little pet boy at home.

            Perhaps most dangerous of all, for all the wrong reasons, was the development of her personal sexuality.  When Scott used to visit home from college, as infrequently as Judy would allow, he noticed something different in Maggie, and not just in the more revealing tops and shorts she chose to wear.  From the way she held herself upright to the way she winked and blew soft midair kisses to attractive guys on the street, she was fully into the mode of discovering herself in these ways too.

            And now, apparently, Scott was being slowly initiated into that process, just by nature of being the weakest living thing within her grasp.

            In her youth, when given charge of her shrunken sibling, she rarely gave a second thought to whether or not he was clothed, but now she seemed to actually prefer watching him strip down.  And the more he did it, the less she laughed like she once did and chose to focus intently instead, with only a half-hearted giggle provided, as though she didn’t really feel the need to do it anymore except to keep his drastically diminished ego in check.

            According to what she’d said in the car on the way home, she was so comfortable with it that she had no real qualms with rubbing her older brother down under lather with a brush and her own two curious hands.

            Scott shivered again, lost in a reverie of horror and anxiety at what was going on in his sister’s head.  He didn’t want to admit it, but he had to: this was no longer simple entertainment for her.  Not completely, anyway.  There was some kind of awakening happening inside her.  Whatever it was, he knew he didn’t want to be a part of it in any way, and at this point, he was willing to resort to any method to escape her presence this night.

            Then it hit him.

            His mother.  Judy was his ticket out of the whole evening.  As much as Scott hated being under anyone’s control, the woman had her limits she stuck to when disciplining and playing with her reduced son.  He had no idea what it was with Maggie lately, but her wily and unpredictable manner was scaring him enough that Judy seemed comparatively like an oasis of safety and predictability.

            At this point, he couldn’t imagine a single one of the responsibilities normally handed to him by Judy that would be worse than what Maggie had in store.  Nail painting.  Foot rubs.  Shoulder massage.  Cleaning the entire damn house from floor to ceiling on a miniature winch.  Hell, she could even tuck him into the bottom of her house slippers, and he’d be grateful for it.  Anything was better than being with Maggie right now.

            He pulled himself to his feet in a panic and took off running down the hallway with newfound resolve in his plan, all the while feeling lower than ever at the thought that insisting his mother take charge of him was the best possible option in his life at this moment.

            “I’m gonna need so many fucking psychiatrists someday,” Scott grumbled under his breath as he ran toward Judy’s home office.

Scott could hear the shower running in the upstairs bathroom, his own personal ticking time bomb as Maggie washed off after what was probably the most intense soccer game of her club career.  He had a feeling she would be eager to finish up on herself because of what she had planned for him afterward, and the mere thought of it made him run even faster on his way to Judy’s office.

            He had no idea if his mother was even in a mood to spare him Maggie’s mind-bending torment and raunchy word games.  Still, anything he could do was worth a try.

            Entering through the stylish French doors of Judy’s home office, Scott breathed a sigh of relief to see her sitting at the desk, tapping away on her laptop, her back to him.  He began to slowly make his way inside the room but, despite his haste, couldn’t stop himself from taking in the visage of his tremendous mother upon her throne.

            Her meticulously maintained blonde hair hung in a fashionable swoop over her shoulder.  Tall, full-bodied, but by no means overweight, she was a powerful woman in both stature and voice.  At forty-four, she was in shape envied by dozens of her peers several years younger.  She was still clad in a suit after some cross-town calls she’d been making earlier in the afternoon, though she had apparently begun to unwind, as her dark stockings were discarded and crumpled on the carpet a few feet away, along with her favorite black pumps, which lay on their sides.

            Her posture was straight and professional in the chair, but her legs were crossed underneath in a relaxed position, both bare feet arched up against the legs of the chair, soothingly flexing the deep wrinkles of her smooth, mature soles.

            Those feet.  They’d been the bane of Scott’s existence ever since he was thirteen and his mother had first shrunken him down underneath them for pampering duty.  Over the years he’d come to be intimately familiar with every nook and fleshy cranny of those pair of large, womanly appendages, even more so than Judy’s face, which he assumed was just how she liked their relationship to be.  She’d never been one to enjoy having others stand above her.

            There they were, like resting feral animals, strong and oddly artistic propped back against the chair legs, toes splayed casually against the carpet and scrunching into the fibers every so often for the exercise of it.

            As much as he hated to be forced under them without reason, and as much as he feared them when his mother was angry, Scott had unavoidably developed a respect for them.  Those feet had gotten Judy far as she metaphorically and literally walked over anyone required to get ahead in her career.  They were a part of her: the whole dominant package that made up Judy Stevens, and anyone who wasn’t at least intimidated by her presence was a blind fool.  That much he knew.

            But now, wallowing in his humiliation and simply desperate for a night that didn’t involve his sister experimenting with his naked body in her socks, he just needed his mommy to take charge of him and protect him like she used to.

            His mom.  Mom.  Definitely mom.  Not mommy.  She could make him call her that, but he would never resort to doing it himself in the safety of his own head.

            The twelve-inch Scott came to a stop behind Judy’s chair, his eyes still glued uneasily upon her bare feet arched vertically along the leg of the chair.  Despite being his maximum height at this moment, he was still just barely chin level with the heels of his mother’s magnificent size 12s.  They were forces of nature, ready to be unleashed on whoever misbehaved within their vicinity.

            Shaking his head to remove himself from this odd little trance, Scott wrung his knuckles together.  He had been in this position far too much.  It wasn’t just that Judy made him call her “Mommy” so often and Maggie made him call her whatever the hell she wanted at the moment.  It was undeniably affecting his head being so low around everyone all the time.  His height was starting to creep its way into his whole outlook on life.

            And he still had eleven months before he even could make an appeal to grow back to normal before an evaluation board of bloodthirsty lawyers.  In an effort to remain realistic, Judy had reassured her son that, at best, he was going to receive some increased rights for leaving the house, but nothing more for the time being, as he was still being closely observed as the shrunken house arrest guinea pig for the country’s judicial system.

            He was a prisoner in his house for the long haul.

            Shrugging to himself, Scott realized, with a singular end goal of avoiding Maggie’s exploratory clutches for the rest of the evening, his best chance was to throw himself as fully into being his mother’s personal attendant for the rest of the evening as he could.  What did he have to lose?

            Not risking any more time that his sister could burst into the room and claim him again, Scott carefully pressed his fists into the silky wall that made up Judy’s maternal sole and commenced kneading.  Aware that he might accidentally spook her and end up with her heel smashing downward onto him in surprise, he rubbed with vigor and purpose to differentiate his touch from that of a housefly alighting on her body.

            He felt the slight twitch in her skin as he began, but she didn’t do anything or even speak as he set about massaging the soft underside of his mother’s right foot.

            The flesh was toughened almost to the point of a blister around her heel, so he applied extra effort there, careful to avoid hurting the tender area.  He knew precisely how hard he could press without disturbing her.  He’d put in the time.

            With this done, he worked his way through the winding creases of Judy’s sole, the doughiest section, and couldn’t bring himself to hate it.  Her skin was cool to the touch against his palms and getting into a rhythm for caressing the sole in circles was cathartically calming in a way after such a violent evening in Maggie’s cleats.

            He ended by crouching down next to her bulbous toes, splayed against the carpet, and dug his hands between the narrow crevices of each one, caressing with aggressive abandon.  He needed to make an impression, after all, if he wanted to get out of his alternative evening plans.

            Cleaning duty in this area was often part of his job, given how much time she spent walking around in stockings and heels, so he set about fishing between Judy’s toes to tidy up.  He came away with one small clump of toe jam the size of an apricot in his hand and a few specks of dirt.  Nothing major.

            An oily whiff hung around Judy’s foot after such a long day, but frankly, after having his senses turned inside out for ninety minutes in Maggie’s abhorrent shoe, Scott could only notice when he inhaled deeply enough to check.

            Just as he released his hands from the massive arched display of his mother’s foot, before he could even reach for its twin, he felt a warm palm flattening against his naked back, followed by firm fingers curling around his abdomen just enough to grasp him safely enough for vertical transport.

            Realizing what was happening, Scott let himself go limp in his mother’s firm hand as she gently lifted him off the carpet under her chair and brought him up to her level.  As he hovered over her lap, she quickly brought her other hand underneath him, seating his bare bottom onto her other palm, allowing him to use her two hands like a chair.

            “Hi, sweetie,” Judy cooed, her lips spreading into a dulcet simper at her eldest son so awkwardly cradled between her two hands.  “Did Mother’s Day come early this year?  Because that was wonderful.”

            “Thanks,” Scott answered sheepishly.  “Just thought you might like it.”

            “Oh, you have no idea,” Judy groaned with exhaustion, rolling her eyes playfully.  “I’ve been either on a phone, in front of a computer, or talking to people in offices for more minutes than I spent breathing today.”

            “Sorry,” he said, folding his hands in his lap, hoping to cover up his crotch as casually as possible since he was so fully displayed in front of his mother.  It was bad enough feeling the clammy padding of her hand pressed directly against his rear end to hold him up.

            “How was the game?” Judy asked, blinking quickly as she remembered.  “Where’s Maggie?  I’m sorry I couldn’t have seen it myself.”

            “It went well. They won,” Scott answered as simply as possible, clearing his throat.  “She’s upstairs taking a shower.”

            “Oh, I knew they could take the championship this year.  I just knew it.  With that line-up, and Maggie at the front?  Unbeatable,” Judy cheered happily.  “And how was it for you?  Could you see much of it?”

            “It was, um…” Scott began, choosing his words carefully, knowing an improper balance of tattling or subtlety could end poorly for him.  “Kind of tough for a while, I guess.  I didn’t really… see any of it.”

            “Oh?”

            “Yeah.  I was… kind of along for the whole thing.”

            At this, Judy’s expression of curiosity tightened up in a way that threw Scott for a loop.  Her lips parted slowly as she exhaled in gasping surprise before pressing back together with what he detected as slight contempt.  Her fingers that were wrapped around his torso slowly curled along his skin, caressing him gently with her thick fingertips.

            “Really,” Judy murmured, puckering her lips for a moment.  “In her shoe?”

            “Yeah.”

            “The whole time.”

            “Yeah.”

            “How small were you?”

            “I don’t know.  Three, maybe?”

            “Oh, wow,” Judy sighed, tilting her head to the side slightly as she continued to gaze piteously on her battered son.  “We’re going to… make sure that doesn’t happen again, honey.  I promise.”

            “Thanks, Mom.”

            “You’re really doing okay? No marks?”

            “Not really, nothing that won’t go away in a couple days,” he answered flatly, having learned long ago to shrug off such minor inconveniences.

            “You’re going to really get your sleep tonight, aren’t you?”

            An opening.  He had to make this count.

            “I’m not so sure,” Scott answered lightly.

            “Why not?  Too sore?” Judy queried quickly with what sounded suspiciously like concern, though Scott suspected it was less out of fear for his physical wellbeing and more out of the idea that he would be unable to work effectively as her personal butler the following day.

            “No, Maggie just got new socks.  She said she’s wearing me to bed in them,” Scott shared, trying his very hardest not to let an accusatory tone slip into his phrasing.  The best possible scenario for him was to keep all things equal, despite how roughly he’d been treated by his sister.  The Stevens women generally did not take kindly to having the whistle blown on them.  Particularly when they had the option of depositing said whistleblower under their toes to silence future whistling.

            Judy raised an eyebrow and began to tsk, shaking her head back and forth emphatically.  “Oh, she is, is she?  Well, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”

            “Um…”
            “I suppose she just likes taking it hard on you and forgets sometimes that even young men trying to make amends for their mistakes need some rest, too,” Judy considered, tossing her sleek dark blonde locks over her other shoulder, as though discovering this fact about Maggie for the first time.

            “Maybe,” Scott shrugged as neutrally as possible, still keeping his hands cupped around his family jewels.  This was moving along surprisingly positively for him.

            “I’m sorry I haven’t gotten to see you as much these past few days,” Judy added sadly.  With the fingers she’d just used to massage her son’s chest, she tilted her hand against his back more steeply so that she could run her thumb across the top of his head.  She rubbed it back and forth in a comforting pattern, ruffling his hair, but it was actually going a long way to relaxing Scott.  It was like having a thick pillow rocked gently along his head.

            “That’s okay,” Scott said, the words coming out as more of a satisfied whisper than he’d intended as he enjoyed the massage on the top of his head, and he indulged himself enough to close his eyes and just focus on the feeling.  Despite the embarrassment, he knew it would be a waste of a perfectly good moment to relax after his back-breaking evening if he spent it awkwardly avoiding the contact.

            “How about this, then?” Judy giggled warmly, enjoying the spontaneous reaction of her soothed son.  “We’ve both had long days, and I’m ready to wind down.  How about since Maggie’s gotten so much quality time with you, I take over for a little while.  Sound good to you, honey?”

            “Y-Y-Yeah,” Scott said, riding the last waves of pleasure from the scalp massage and grinning up at Judy’s face.  “Sounds good.”

            “Great,” Judy smirked happily before glancing at the screen of her laptop. “Now, I have to get this last report reviewed and sent off, but I’m sure we can make do here.  Mind sitting with me for a few minutes?”

            Scott almost flinched as he nodded his head in confirmation.  He wasn’t positive he’d heard correctly, but it sounded an awful lot like Judy was treating him nicely.

            More than nicely.  Hospitably.  Even sympathetically.

            What kind of body-snatching aliens had invaded, and how long ago had his real mother been replaced?  Was this some kind of lucid dream?

            It figured that, even in a dream he could control, he’d still find himself sitting naked in his mother’s hands.  Dreams were just another fun side effect of his sentence, and Scott’s most vivid ones tended to rigidly follow the spirit of his unfortunate reality if not the letter.

            Judy smiled in answer and lowered her hands toward her thighs before tending her son down into her lap with such delicacy that if he were a sleeping newborn, he would’ve remained blissfully in perverted dreamland.

            Scott gulped.  Even with how nicely she was treating him, and even at his full height of twelve inches, gazing upward from the base of his mother’s towering torso was an odd and startlingly intimate experience.  Her legs shifted, trembling imperceptibly under his back, and as he involuntarily pressed his feet against the shirt over her warm stomach, he became uncomfortably aware of the fact that the point he’d emerged from her as a newborn was just a matter of inches below his ankles, separated only by a few layers of cloth.

            Judy’s eyes returned to the screen above to read, but her left hand lowered toward Scott with fingers outstretched, warily, as though she might scare him, a precaution she never thought twice about normally.

            Slightly unnerved again by her overly amiable behavior, he watched suspiciously as his mother’s large palm hovered just above his torso and her fingers began to caress along his shoulders and chest, back and forth again in the same cycle.

            She was… petting him.

            Scott was taken aback.  Sure, in the grand scheme of things, his role at this moment was that of a lap cat for his mother.  That was a little off.  But all things considered, with his evening saved from Maggie, this had been bizarrely easy.

            Whether or not that was a good thing remained to be seen.

Scott continued lying in his mother’s lap as her fingers gently massaged along his arms and the top of his head as though he were a house kitten.  She stroked so lightly that a warm, tickling sensation was making its way along his skin in goose bumps, and he scarcely had the energy to feel embarrassment for it.

            Though still catastrophically uncomfortable being a foot tall and totally in the nude, the feeling of Judy’s soft fingertips against his skin was incredibly soothing after such an exhausting evening in Maggie’s shoes.  He could almost feel himself beginning to drift off to sleep.

            “SCOTT!” sang out the voice of his sister, jolting him back awake, echoing through the halls of the house as loudly as though she were already standing above him and scooping him up in her eager fingers.  “Where aaaaaare you?”

            Surprisingly, she didn’t sound angry.  He would’ve expected her to already be fuming at the fact that he left the kitchen after being told to stay put.

            Instead, her tone held the revere of a daycare worker searching for a misbehaving toddler that had wandered off.  Sweet, almost.

            Somehow, Scott found himself more chilled than ever by this fact.

            “We’re in here, honey,” Judy answered loudly enough for Maggie to hear in the other room.  As she spoke, the hand that had been petting Scott laid itself down on his body, her palm flattened firmly without pressing onto his stomach.  He was clasped rather snugly against her warm thighs, partially hidden from view.  She seemed almost to be shielding him.

            Scott frowned, still wondering what was happening with his mother tonight.  He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth when he was being offered an escape from Maggie’s bathtub and socks, yet part of him was still driven to paranoia from the stark contrast.  Either she was on drugs and had lapsed into the most charitable mood of her power-drunk life, or something strange was going on.

            Scott knew there was no way he was lucky enough for it to be anything other than the latter option.

            “Mom?  Mom, we won the game!” Maggie cried as she bounded enthusiastically into the room.

            “That’s fantastic, honey, congratulations!” Judy answered back genuinely.  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.  This evening was the only time the group from Techilogic had for a meeting and, you know, with the bid coming up soon, I…”

            “I know, I get it Mom.  It’s fine.  Do you have Scott?” the teen asked innocently, suddenly shifting her tone again.  “I need him.”

            “You need him?”

            “Yeah.  He’s all gross.  I had him in my sock for the very end of the game, so I was gonna give him a bath.”

            “I see.  That’s nice of you.  I’m sure he needs it,” Judy commented, leaning her face closer to her lap and inhaling quietly before sighing.  “Yes, he does.  I can smell it from here.  Maybe it’s time we got you some new cleats.  We don’t want your teammates complaining about them in the locker room.”

            “Mom, they’re fine.  He’s the one that soaks it up like a sponge.  It’s not my fault.”

            “Nobody’s saying it is, honey,” Judy said calmly, apparently trying to defuse the situation.  Her palm, still splayed over Scott’s stomach, began caressing back and forth by pivoting on the heel of her hand.  The goose bumps returned and Scott felt bizarrely safe beneath her maternal touch, more so than he had in years.

            Okay, seriously, Scott thought to himself with a frown, even as the tingling sensation returned to his skin and made him feel pleasantly tranquilized under the smooth circular motion of his mother’s creamy palm skin.  Who the hell was this woman?

            Whenever Judy played her cards like this, it was usually to lull Scott into a false sense of security so that she could casually warp his mind with some humiliatingly macabre exercise to further cement his place at her feet.  At this point, he was fully braced for it to take place any moment.

            The sad part was he didn’t even care, whatever it was she had planned.  Anything was still better than going back to Maggie this evening.

            “Well, can I have him now?” Maggie repeated.  Scott could hear the thumps of her feet as she marched confidently across the room toward their mother’s desk, then suddenly saw her face appear over Judy’s shoulder as she peered down at him.  She wrinkled her nose in surprise and distaste at the sight of Judy’s fingers spread over Scott’s bare chest and shoulders.  “Wow, Mom.  What are you guys even doing in here?  He’s not a cat, you know.”

            Scott couldn’t help but roll his eyes at his sister’s comment.  In her eyes, viewing him as a cat would probably be an improvement.

            “Yes, I know, but he seemed pretty worn out after your game.  I’m guessing you wore him for a little longer than just the very end?” Judy answered nonchalantly.

            “Why, did he say that?” Maggie asked cheekily, grinning broadly and clearly hiding her venom with some effort.

            “No, he didn’t.  He didn’t say anything about it.  I just know my kids pretty well,” Judy explained.  “And plus, I actually need him to myself for a little while.  It’s been a long day.”

            “What?  But Mom, you said I got him tonight!” Maggie whined, stomping her foot and crossing her arms.

            “I know I did, but you had him for the game.  I could use some relaxation time.  You can see him tomorrow.”

            “But you said he needs a bath,” Maggie added earnestly, still determined to get some more time out of this affair.  “How about I do that with him, and you can stay here and wait?”

            “I would, honey, but I’ve got some work I need him to do that might get him a little dirty again.  I’ll wash him myself in the morning.  You don’t need to worry about it.”

            “Fine,” Maggie sighed, exhaling dramatically and turning to exit the room.  “I guess I’m just going to bed, then.  I’m wiped out.”  Her defeated response came more speedily than Scott expected, and he couldn’t help but wonder if it had something to do with her discomfort in mentioning his bath around Judy.

            He had a sneaking suspicion Maggie wanted total privacy while giving him his first bath, and that was what made him tremble the hardest at the thought of it.

            Judy didn’t look down at him, but must’ve sensed his shaking, because her fingers set about massaging his abdomen again in gentle strokes, and it actually worked, despite the humiliation Scott felt for it.

            “Thanks, sweetie.  I’ll see you in the morning.  And we’ll do something special for your win tonight,” Judy added cheerfully after Maggie as the French door swung lightly against the adjacent one without closing all the way.

            Finally, her gaze returned to Scott in her lap, a half-smirk on her lips.  “Cold, honey?” she said simply, grazing her thumb along Scott’s cheek as lovingly as possible as the last of his nervous quivering faded away with Maggie’s departure.

            “No, I’m fine,” he answered uncomfortably, patting his mother’s branch-sized finger as a gesture of gratitude as it slid down the crook of his neck again.

            “Are you sure?” Judy pressed, her brow furrowing slightly.  “You’re shaking a little.”

            “Must just be the… you know, the no clothes thing,” Scott peeped.

            “Maybe,” she agreed, nodding her head and leaning back in the desk chair to better examine her sprawled son atop her thighs.  The legs of the chair creaked quietly under the weight of her full womanly frame, but silenced quickly after.  “Maybe I can give you a hand with that.  Would you like that?”

            “Um, sure,” Scott lied, but deciding any positive answer he could give would be in his favor at this point.  He still wasn’t sure how much Judy had been embellishing when she told Maggie she had some work for Scott that would dirty him up again.

            The blonde Stevens family matriarch didn’t say anything else.  She only beamed as she lowered her right hand from the desktop, now placing both palms atop her son.  The hand that had been lying on him previously hugged him closer to her palm, and her fingers curled around his ribs, squeezing just enough to let him absorb some of the heat from her smooth skin.

            She let her thumb rest atop his chest and begin fondling innocently back and forth from side to side across his pecs.  Scott could tell her finger was lingering a little longer on his left side so she could feel his little heartbeat.  With her other hand, she flattened her fingers together and laid them overtop his legs and began to caress the few inch differential that she was unable to cover fully, given that he was a foot tall.

            Scott initially froze up, but realizing Judy would notice his stress instantly and only try harder to break it down, forced himself to relax his muscles.  After a minute or so had passed, it was easier than he expected to surrender to his mother’s practiced massage techniques.  It was definitely working at both warming him up and soothing his aches.

            He knew Judy had spent a few of her summers back in high school working at a spa treatment facility to earn extra money and had gotten skilled at manipulating the human body into a peaceful calm.  It had to be even easier with him, given how much of his skin she could touch at any given moment with her hands, which were already large by the standards of normal-sized people.

            With the hand she had laid across her son’s lower body, Judy tilted her wrist and, pressing her pointer and middle fingers together, began to massage along Scott’s legs.  She began with his shins but quickly moved inside his leg, kneading her fingertips generously along his calves and finally up to his inner thighs, where she set about caressing with increased vigor.

            The young man had to bite his lip and willed himself to stay loose as he looked down his body to where Judy’s two fingers were rubbing his left thigh and bumping regularly against his scrotum.  She obviously didn’t mind the occasional contact, but it was making Scott uneasy with each light touch.

            “You’ve really got a lot of tension down here, honey,” Judy observed to her son, frowning a little as she noticed it.  “You must’ve been really clenched up during the game.”

            “Y-Yeah.  I was really, um…” Scott gulped as his mother’s finger brushed against his genitals again.  “…tense.”

            “I guess that’s to be expected.  Really, she shouldn’t be doing that with you, not during games.  We talked about that when you first came home a month ago, but I guess it slipped her mind.  I’ll make sure it sticks this time, honey.  All right?” Judy said sweetly, tilting her head adoringly and flashing him a friendly pucker of her lips to indicate a blown kiss.  “Tonight, you just need a little extra attention and then you’ll be fine again.”

            “Yeah, I, uh…” Scott sputtered awkwardly.  He didn’t even have time to feel confused at this bizarrely charitable statement of hers regarding his wellbeing before his mother’s fingers moved even more deeply up his thigh until they were pressed flush against his member.  He flinched involuntarily at the contact, more from shock than anything else.

            “This doesn’t hurt, does it?” Judy asked casually as she continued massaging his thigh.

            “N-N-No,” Scott coughed, blinking with exasperation, and he was telling the truth.  There was no pain.

            In fact, it was quite the opposite, and that was an even bigger problem than pain.

            Though Judy’s fingertips were focused squarely on his aching thighs, the mere fact that they were still fully in contact with his miniscule goods and methodically rubbing back and forth was plenty to start a chemical reaction in his brain synapses that he knew would very soon spiral out of control.

            “I think I’m okay down there, Mom,” Scott offered quickly, realizing what was happening in his body as a new wave of pleasure rippled through his skin beyond mere relaxation, sending a rapturous tingling down to his crotch in pulses.  “I feel a lot better, really.  I’m warmer and ready to go.”

            “Are you sure, honey?” Judy said, raising an eyebrow as she continued unintentionally masturbating her little boy without halting her progress.  “You still feel really tense.”

            “I’m sure.  Totally fine,” he added, almost tripping over the words, and wrapped his hands around Judy’s thick fingers to try and slow them down.  He could already feel himself firming up.  “I can handle that area.  Seriously.”

            “Oh, Scott, you’re being silly again.  Just relax, okay?” Judy sighed, tilting her head back to examine his entire body more accurately.  “You really think you’re fine now?”

            “Absolutely.  Thanks for the, um…” Scott stuttered.  “…the massage.  It felt good.”

            This seemed to do the trick.  Judy’s fingers ceased their rhythmic stroking against the young man’s crotch and a beam bursting with pride spread across her full pink lips.

            “So glad to hear, Scott.  I guess I haven’t lost my touch since I was eighteen, have I?”

            “Not at all,” he agreed emphatically.

            It flinched, rising a little higher, and Scott began to pray from the depths of his soul that she hadn’t noticed.

            After two months of no contact with his girlfriend Ella and no access to certain livelier locations on the Internet he had taken for granted in the past, he was backed up enough that just about any physical contact was enough to give him the shivers, no matter the source, and no matter the context.

            “I’d say you’re going to be okay, honey,” Judy said proudly with a nod of her head.  “A good night’s sleep and you’ll be okay.  And I will make sure you don’t go down there again during games.  You can be sure of that.”

            “T-T-Thanks,” Scott stammered as his mother’s hands wrapped gently around his sides and lifted him like a toddler off of her lap, setting him lithely onto his feet on the carpet.  Swallowing hard, he added: “P-Please don’t… um… don’t say I asked you to say something.  Please?”

            Nodding knowingly, Judy gave him a smirk before continuing with uncharacteristic sincerity, perhaps owing to the consequences she knew would befall her son if she didn’t keep her promise.  “I won’t.  Don’t worry.  Now, I’ve still got a couple more things to send out, so you can go ahead to your bed,” she said.  “We’ll wash you off in the morning.  And don’t sleep too late; we’re having a visitor tomorrow before noon to go over some financials for the campaign, and I want you… available if we need you.”

            “Great,” he panted, grateful beyond belief for having made it to the end of this conversation, far too exhausted to give a second thought to this foreboding request.  He began jogging toward the door, though was careful to not look like he was trying to escape his mother.

            “Scott?” Judy called out expectantly just as he’d thought he’d managed to slip carefully through the French doors again.

            “What?” he wheezed back, cupping his hands protectively around his sinfully tempted junk again.

            “Mommy loves you,” she chuckled, waggling her fingers at him daintily before turning back to her desk as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world, while her son marched off to a night of sleepless frustration.

Scott blinked himself into wakefulness, only to find the unexpected beam of the morning sun through a window high above bringing him harshly into another day of servitude to his family.  His couch bed was normally protected from the A.M. rays, and it was only after his surroundings cleared up from the blinding flash of light that he realized he was swaddled in a wooly pink washcloth in the marble basin of his mother’s master bedroom sink.

            Puzzled at how he’d arrived here before quickly putting it together that Judy had moved him in what must’ve been a particularly numbing sleep, he gazed up at the faucet above his head, which, although it was within his reach, was only barely so.

            He had definitely lost some height, and it occurred to him that Judy must’ve handled this while he was asleep too.  At least she’d left him something to work with.  He estimated he was at eight inches.

            Given how much practice Judy and Maggie had in testing out his abilities to work at different sizes, he had developed a fairly accurate mental meter of his height by gauging objects around him.

            Before he could rise and crawl up to the rim of the sink, Judy suddenly loomed above him over the dome of the basin, still garbed in her favorite fuzzy pink robe with the fraying thread ends that now resembled regal animal hair.  Her make-up hadn’t been applied just yet but her expression was radiant as she reached over Scott’s head and twisted on the hot water faucet.

            “Good morning, my little sleepyhead,” Judy greeted him with all the sugar in her words that he could handle.  “I hope you don’t mind that I took you down a few inches further while you were asleep.  I’ve got a job for you later that will be easier like this.  How do you feel?”

            “I’m fine…” Scott reported groggily, yawning as the water began to pool around his ankles and sop up the washcloth beneath his naked rear end, then quickly remembered his household-sanctioned manners.  “…how are you?”

            “I feel great, honey.  Ready to tackle the day.  Nancy says she’s got some strong contenders in the offing, and she’s coming by this morning so we can go through them,” Judy answered as she picked up a bar of soap and began to lather it up between her palms with rigorous twisting motions.  “And she sounded pretty excited about them on the phone.”

            Scott’s heart sank.  Great.

            Just great.

            Nancy was coming.

            Nancy.

            Though she wore a number of different hats, in recent years Judy’s close friend Nancy Dugan had made a name for herself as a campaign manager for a variety of the county’s politicians, and was happily handling her biggest job yet for the senatorial hopeful Judy.

            Already well into what most people would call a mid-life crisis, Nancy wore the label of “cougar” on her sleeve proudly with a slew of taut young boyfriends that provided her with cars and vacations just long enough before she dumped them and moved on.  Her dislike of needy macho men was well-known.  And of course, she had always held a particular fascination with the way Judy treated her shrunken son, and was not shy about interacting with him in ways often even more familiar than Scott’s mother.

            And Nancy, being Nancy, took it upon herself to visit the Stevens household whenever possible.  She always said it was to provide Judy with a comfortable environment to discuss her work, but Scott knew perfectly well that she had other motivations in mind as well.

            The first time they’d encountered each other in circumstances where Scott wasn’t even tall enough to reach her ankle, the meeting had ended with her teasing out the most humiliating orgasm of the then-eighteen-year-old Scott’s life inside one of her moist high heels between the greasy tugs of her slender toes.

            The woman wouldn’t know how to act with subtlety if it bit her on the toned calf and latched on for dear life.

            “That’s good,” Scott commented after a long and painful pause, swallowing hard, not even bothering to care as his mother’s soapy hands lowered gingerly into the sink to collect him.  Judy managed to easily cradle him between both of her palms as she dipped him into the frothy water and set about scrubbing his body under firm thumbs.

            “I know Nancy can be a little bit… much sometimes,” Judy chuckled fondly, generally thoroughly entertained by her friend’s aggressive tendencies.  “But it’s just easier to meet here, and plus, she likes getting to see you.”

            “I know,” Scott said simply, so drained of resolve by the prospect of Nancy’s visit that he was able to lie limp in his mother’s grasp as her fingers worked their way along his back, under his armpits, and even along his butt.  She bopped her fingertips tenderly against his rear end with a little giggle, but quickly moved on.

            “Don’t be such a sour puss, honey,” Judy instructed playfully, tapping her thumb on Scott’s forehead as a fake reprimand before stroking it down the side of his face and to his belly button, slicking a fresh line of soap along his skin.  “She’s just playing around.  She never means anything by it.”

            Scott had serious reservations about that, specifically the idea that Nancy molesting him with her toes that one time was something she “didn’t mean anything by,” but he decided to keep his mouth shut, given how friendly Judy had been to him for the last twelve hours.  It was in his best interest to keep this streak going with his mother for as long as possible, no matter how much it made him feel like he’d been transported to the Twilight Zone to have Judy acting like this.

            While his mother had lightly scolded her friend after Scott’s first steamy stint in her stiletto, she hadn’t exactly provided much incentive to never toy with him in similar ways again, and from this, he had a feeling that as long as his safety wasn’t technically at risk in any way, Judy wasn’t much concerned about how her friends decided to spend their time with him.  Hell, there’d even been a time or two when she left them to babysit him purely for disciplinary reasons and actually encouraged them to use unusual methods.  Her rather liberal and borderline carefree approach to personal privacy in general helped ensure that Scott had to look out for himself whenever her giggling over-forty friends came by the house, usually with a frisky glint in their eyes and a few glasses of wine already in.

            He had learned to handle himself when necessary around his mother’s friends to minimize awkwardness as much as possible, but with Nancy, there really was very little chance of escaping an unpleasant encounter of some kind.

            The twenty-one-year-old remained stoic as his sunny-faced mother dunked him for a last rinse into the warm water, which had by this time filled nearly to the brim of the basin.  Her exploratory fingers curled for a final time around every curve of her puny son’s bare body, checking for specks of dirt or suds that she’d neglected to clean, though as usual, she had been more than thorough in her self-imposed job of washing her son.

            Scott had insisted many a time that he was capable of doing it, but she never missed an opportunity as long as she had a few minutes free to do it herself, “for convenience sake.”

            That was another line Scott had a very difficult time believing.

            Still, he didn’t feel like complaining was the right way to go.  If it wasn’t Judy, it would’ve been Maggie, and that would’ve been guaranteed torture.  Although if history was any indication, Maggie could have him filthy enough for a new bath by day’s end, and avoiding that fate forever was going to become more and more difficult with each passing night.

            Satisfied with the cleanliness of her detainee child, Judy scooped the dripping boy back into her palms and lowered him all the way down to the fluffy rug in front of the sink, placing him directly between her two massive bare feet.  Her fair flesh was still glistening with a few stray droplets from the shower she’d taken a few minutes before.  She then retrieved a washcloth, which she handed down for him to towel off with.

            Grateful for her at least letting him do some things for himself, Scott tried to ignore the sight of his mother’s meaty feet flanking him on either side and set about drying off.  Once finished, he lifted the towel over his head, which was plucked back between the thumb and forefinger of Judy’s lowered hand.

            “By the way, honey, I thought I’d do you a favor and try to mix up the routine,” Judy informed him without looking down as she washed her own hands in the sink above.

            “Oh?” Scott answered over the crash of the cold water from the faucet.

            “Yes.  I got some new body gel and thought I’d try a little of it on my feet, so your job is a little easier later today.  What do you think?”
            “I… um.  I don’t know.  They look clean,” Scott said, glancing from side to side at the enormous pair of feminine appendages and scratching the top of his head.

            Judy giggled.  “Why don’t you give them a try?”

            “A… a what?” he responded with a frown.

            “Just tell me what you think,” his mother insisted, tilting her left foot onto its side slightly so that her wrinkled pink sole was exposed to her son.  “Go on.  Give it a little sniff.”

            Shrugging, Scott crouched down and faced the arched foot, inhaling lightly.  It was an aroma of lilac, with a fruity hint as well.  Smooth and soapy, and at the very least pleasant.  Uncomfortably enough, after all his years of consequences for a rebellious youth, Scott was something of an unspoken connoisseur for body creams.  Uneasy as it made him, the woman was right that it would make his job on her feet more enjoyable the next time he found himself amongst them, or under them, with the latter option being more likely.

            Judy’s toes gripped the long furry strands of the rug fabric as she flattened her sole back against the fibers once she saw Scott stand back up.  “Well?”

            “Not bad,” he said, nodding his head at her, but careful not to look directly up toward her face and risk seeing into the fuzzy hanging cavern of her robe.  He knew she’d at least be wearing panties and a bra underneath, but that was a sight he was still not prepared to see on his mother quite so early in the morning, or any time, for that matter.

            “I thought you might like it.  It’ll give you a nice break, in case Nancy didn’t decide to clean up as well as I do,” Judy commented, giving her hairdo a few final touches before nodding to herself in the mirror.

            “Oh, I almost forgot!” she said suddenly with a snicker to herself before lowering a tiny bundle of clothes clenched in her fist down to the grateful Scott, who had been fully nude since at least eight o’clock the previous night and was eager to cover up again, for however long it lasted.

            “Thanks!” Scott sighed happily, rapidly pulling on the tiny boxers, shorts, and t-shirt.  He clasped his hands on the fabric and just soaked in the joy and security of it.  Undoubtedly someone would find an excuse to strip him of this privilege sooner rather than later, so it was best to enjoy it now as best as he could.

            “I’ve got to get started on Maggie’s congratulations breakfast now,” Judy said, laying her hands atop the bathroom counter with a soft slap.  “How about I give you a ride downstairs?”

            Judy lifted her right foot a few inches off the rug and then tapped her toes indicatively against the surface of it before letting it come to rest mightily on the fabric again.

            Scott nodded and straddled the top of his mother’s bare foot with his left leg, carefully sliding his butt up closer to her leg, and hugged both arms around her ankle as far as he could reach.  Fortunately, Judy had on a silver anklet that hung loosely against her skin with delicate chains large enough for Scott to grip them safely.

            Checking her boy’s security with a quick glance, Judy tightened the strap of her poofy pink bathrobe and began humming a song to herself, ambling gaily out of the master bedroom toward the stairs, with the freshly clean Scott wrapped awkwardly around his mother’s foot.

“Scott, I’m out of butter,” Maggie whimpered innocently from the other end of the breakfast table.  “I need you to butter my pancake.”

            Scott tried not to roll his eyes as he sauntered back toward his sister as she pointed her fork and knife toward the ceiling and pounded her fists gently against the tabletop, rattling him under the quaking wooden surface.

            Still, this wasn’t the worst job he could’ve been given.  He could’ve been put on floor duty, giving mid-meal foot massages and cleaning up dropped crumbs, which he was certain Maggie would’ve preferred.  Instead, Judy had assigned her eight-inch eldest son to wander around atop the kitchen table and act as a waiter for herself, Maggie, and Kyle as they enjoyed the culinary rewards of Maggie’s soccer championship labors.

            Scott lugged the open margarine tub behind him up to Maggie’s plate and pulled the butter knife from the swirled yellow miasma, scooping out a slab of it on the tip as he went.  Eyeing his sister’s plate before him, there seemed to be an awful lot of butter already caking the circular skillet pastry.  Why did she need more?

            Obviously he wasn’t going to bring it up, but it was clear she just wanted something else to ask him to do.  Without making eye contact, he heaved the knife over the pancakes with some difficulty and spread it around evenly, until the heat of the pancakes had mostly melted it into a liquid.

            “Thanks, Mr. Waiter.  I’ll let you know if I need anything else,” Maggie giggled.

            “You’re doing a very nice job, Scott,” Judy chimed with a smile as she continued chewing on a bite of pancake.

            “Hey, wait a second,” Kyle Stevens piped in, watching his tiny brother walk back across the tabletop with a suspicious glance.  “I hope you guys, you know, washed him off and stuff after he was in your gross shoes, right?”

            “My shoes aren’t gross.  You’re gross,” Maggie fired back with a snicker at her fifteen-year-old younger brother on the opposite side of the table.

            “Wow, nice one!” the boy quipped, crossing his arms.  “You’re, what, in tenth grade now?”

            “Mom, he’s being annoying, and it’s my game-winning breakfast,” Maggie complained, though Scott couldn’t help but note her tone was far less severe than if, say, he had been the one with the retorts..

            “Kyle, honey, I promise you he’s perfectly clean.  I washed him myself,” Judy said, winking at Scott when she caught his eye again.  “Isn’t that right, Scott?”

            “Yep,” Scott said clearly, still avoiding his brother’s glance.

            Things with Scott’s youngest sibling had been tense, to say the least, since he had arrived home under court order.  Kyle was polite enough to not personally contribute to Scott’s torment like Maggie did so ferociously, but he made no effort either to hide his disdain for his college-age convict brother, and made it clear he wanted as little to do with him as possible.

            Scott leaned against the fruit bowl in the center of the table and picked up the napkin Judy had set out for him with a few miniature pancakes she had made by cooking loose droplets of batter on the stove.

            It surprised him that she had thought to do that.  Generally his meals were a little more mundane and thrown together, like a few chunks of bread and tomato, or slices from a banana.  Shrugging it off as her bizarre current mood of actual gentility, he chewed thoughtfully on the bite-size pancakes for a few seconds with hesitant gladness, knowing it was only a matter of time until a new request for service was made.

            “Kyle, are you finished with that?” Judy asked of her youngest child as he drained the last of his orange juice glass in one gulp.

            “Yep,” he answered back, placing it back on the table with a loud clack.

            “Careful, Kyle.  Those are glass,” Judy scolded gently before turning to face the littlest Stevens.  “Scott, honey, your brother needs a refill.”

            “Okay,” Scott said, placing his napkin back on the edge of the fruit bowl and walking toward the orange juice tumbler.

            “I can get it fine by myself, thanks,” Kyle butted in coldly, snatching the entire orange jug swiftly with one hand before his older brother could begin pushing it across the tabletop toward the boy’s plate.  “I’m not eight years old, like some people here.”

            “Moooom, he’s doing it again,” Maggie groaned, twirling a few locks of hay hair with her pointer finger.

            Besides the status of being a normal-sized person with the ability to leave the house whenever he pleased, Scott envied nothing else about his younger brother more than his seeming immunity to calling Maggie out on her behavior.  The fifteen-year-old technology-obsessed bookworm seemed to be an expert at dancing along the disciplinary line of making fun of her without getting into real trouble.  This was a concept Scott had never quite mastered, and often took his insults to his sister well beyond the point of return.

            “Can you two please not do this this morning?  We’re trying to have a nice breakfast to celebrate Maggie’s game.  As a family,” Judy drawled with some exasperation, running her palm along her cheek.  “Let’s just be civil.  You two have been getting along so much better recently.”

            “We are getting along, Mom.  The whole family is.  See, watch,” Maggie concurred, before her gaze fell upon the Ken doll-sized Scott again in the center of the table and she snapped her fingers together with aplomb.  “Scott.  I want more bacon.”

            “Now, now, he’s not a dog you can just snap at,” Judy corrected before glancing over at Scott with a smile.  “I’d like another piece too, though, honey.”

            Nodding to both Stevens women in recognition, Scott meandered toward the paper towel-wrapped plate with bacon strips stacked three layers high.  Reaching over it, he grabbed up a chewy strip in each arm and carried them like closed stepladders along the tabletop, going to Maggie first to avoid an inevitable complaint for being kept waiting.

            “Just put it on my plate,” the ponytailed teenage girl instructed without looking up again, stabbing another thick morsel of pancake sopping with syrup on the end of her fork.

            Scott nodded and began laying the crispy brown strip down on the edge of the glass plate, balancing it there so it didn’t dip into the pooled syrup around the rim.

            “No, weirdo, not on the edge where it’ll fall off.  On the plate.  Here!” Maggie commented aggressively, her tone instantly becoming hostile, though Scott could detect she had decided to sound like that regardless of where he placed the crispy pork.

            On her final word, she pointed at Scott with her fork, which still had the pancake chunk on it, and prodded at his arm, intentionally sliding the gooey bite of food along his bicep and forearm and spreading a generous layer of sticky syrup residue onto his skin and t-shirt.

            “Sorry,” Scott responded rapidly.  He cringed at the gooey sensation on his arm, but shrugged it off quickly, knowing she might’ve done far worse, like pour syrup onto his clean clothes and force him to change out of them already, with breakfast not even done.

            “Maggie, I just gave him a bath,” Judy reprimanded, though there was a small snicker hidden under her words.

            “So what?  Are we running out of soap or something?  It’s no big deal.  I’ll just give him a new bath after breakfast,” Maggie suggested snidely, shrugging and popping the bite of pancake between her lips, her teeth sliding metallically against the utensil tines.  Her eyes met Scott’s and he could see that oh-so-familiar scheming gleam shining through magnificently from her baby blue irises.  “I’ll clean you up again,” she whispered directly to her tiny brother.

            How could so much adorable beauty still sparkle with so much malice and hunger for discovery of what she wasn’t supposed to know about?

            Scott could only shiver at her words.

            “That won’t be necessary,” Judy commented with a sly grin.  “Scott?  May I have my bacon now?”

            “Yep.  Coming, Mom,” he said, jogging over to Judy’s place setting, eager to put distance between himself and Maggie as soon as possible.  He wasn’t sure how it would be done yet, but he apparently would have to cling close to Judy throughout the day if he wanted to try and outlast Maggie’s request to bathe him.

            He arrived in front of his mother’s plate and dropped the bacon slice onto it, knowing Judy wouldn’t care how it was positioned.

            “Thanks, sweetie,” she responded as she gingerly placed her empty fork back on the plate and outstretched her hand toward her son.  “Can you come a little closer for a second?”

            “What?  Um, sure,” Scott mumbled, confused, as he walked around his mother’s tall drinking glass, which sat just barely below his shoulder level, and stood before her near the edge of the table.

            “Let’s just see that arm, okay?” she asked pleasantly.  Her hand closed affectionately around Scott’s syrup-coated arm, guiding him closer to the edge of the table, while her face seemed to loom closer and closer to him, until Scott realized he was close enough to reach out and touch his mother’s plush lips.

            “Mom?  What are you…” Scott whispered, completely puzzled now.

            “Just relax.  It would be a waste to give you a bath after you had one half an hour ago,” Judy commented as she continued leaning forward until her nose was brushing her his shoulder, and before Scott could react, she was opening her mouth wide enough that her son’s arm fit easily into the damp darkness.

            With a friendly bat of her eyelashes, then, she closed her lips tenderly over Scott’s limb, trapping the majority of it inside, though she was careful not to bring her teeth down on it.

            “Oh, for God’s sake,” Kyle groaned, rolling his eyes and chomping on his pancake.  “You guys are so weird sometimes.”

            “M-M-Mom?” Scott peeped meekly, and a moment later felt his mother’s tongue wrapping itself around his arm inside her mouth.  He shivered, the full tactile experience of it equivalent to falling face-first into a mud patch.

            It was overwhelmingly warm, like rolling his arm just above the flames of a campfire, and saliva seemed to gush from every microscopic pore of the woman’s curious tongue as she licked him without pause.  Every slimy inch and every slippery taste bud was snaking across his skin, twisting and sliding with such speed and practice that Scott felt the closest approximation of it was having his entire arm French-kissed.

            By his mother.

            “Mmmmm…” Judy murmured without opening her lips to let Scott’s arm escape, savoring the pancake-tainted flavor.  Her cheeks tightened, and she sucked on his arm harder, rending the syrup particles from him and enjoying every sugary taste test of his skin.  She continued working her tongue around his arm, batting at it and slurping along his flesh until she was certain she’d cleaned up every last sticky patch left from Maggie’s fork poke.

            Satisfied, with a soft pop of her lips, Judy opened her mouth again, allowing Scott to hastily retract his arm from between her lips.  She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, still sticky with syrup.

            “Thank you, Scott.  That was delicious,” Judy informed the quivering boy, his eyes unblinking, as he struggled to come up with a reaction.

            “Wow, Mom, and you get on me for being too rough with him,” Maggie laughed, covering her mouth and shaking her head in disbelief.

            “Don’t be silly, sweetie.  I was gentle.  Wasn’t I, Scott?” Judy queried, her expression completely serious.

            “Y-Y-Yeah,” Scott gulped, not sure how he could possibly answer without offending or otherwise inspiring someone at the table.

            “Just be glad you’re too big for her to put the whole thing in,” Maggie added with a menacing giggle that gave Scott a feeling under his skin far slimier than anything his mother’s snaking tongue could do to him.

            “Har-har, honey.  Listen, Nancy will be here in about fifteen minutes, so I’ve got to get changed out of this robe and into some clothes.  Can you guys help pick everything up in here?” Judy requested of her kids as she rose from her chair to leave.  Before she did, she cast a quick glance at Maggie, who was already leaning forward to snatch her brother from the table and whisk him to the nearest tub-equipped bathroom.  “I’m reserving your brother, honey,” she snapped.  “Leave him alone for now.  I’ll need him in a bit.”

            Defeated, Maggie slumped deep back into the chair again and pouted, frowning at her brother.

            “Later,” she whispered matter-of-factly to Scott once Judy had left the room and was out of earshot.  “You’re mine again.”

            Too perplexed by the last few minutes to really be affected yet by his sister’s threat, Scott ignored her and sat down on the edge of the fruit bowl.

            He picked up a napkin scrap to sop up Judy’s saliva on his limb, made gummier from the influx of syrup.  Wiping with disgust on his entire molested arm, he painfully wondered how in the hell Judy could consider what she just did to him to be cleaner than just having syrup splattered on his skin.

            He knew perfectly well she didn’t really think that, but admitting that to himself would also force Scott to admit that his mother had just put part of his tiny body into her mouth for the pure amusement of it, and that was a thought he wasn’t emotionally prepared to recognize.

“I think you’re going to like this, Judy,” Nancy Dugan said eagerly, biting her lip with anticipation as she reached down into her briefcase to pull out another stack of papers bound by clips.  “This is the list I had last week of potentials.  I highlighted all the ones we’ve gotten since then so we can add them to the guest list.”

            “Wow.  Somebody’s been busy,” Judy said with surprise as she examined the impressive number of lines on the sheet she’d been handed.

            “Hey, you don’t pay me the almost-big bucks for nothing,” Nancy joked, crossing her leg over her knee and throwing her head back to chuckle.  Her hair, normally a dirty blonde, had recently been dyed a radiant auburn.  She wore a tight gray suit that hugged her athletic curves in a manner complimentary enough that men half her age would stop and take a second glance at her pronounced rear.  Her legs, toned and on a rigid shaving schedule, were sculpted by years of rigorous weekday yoga classes.  A constantly-grinning countenance was marked with the unmistakable expression of multiple plastic surgeries; miraculously, most had gone over well, and some of the advanced years had indeed been smoothed from her face.

            Hidden away under the desk was Scott, still at a modest eight inches tall, camping out beneath the gently applied weight of his mother’s left bare foot: the one he’d been promised he’d be massaging eventually the night before.  The ball of it was gingerly pressed down against his chest, pinning him against the carpet lightly enough that he avoided rug burns.  Her heel, however, was arched higher in the air, giving him some room to maneuver his arms and more thoroughly caress her swollen sole as needed.

            Scott noticed a difference in Judy’s flesh as he rubbed it, which was puffier and rosier than normal, after all the time she’d spent walking around town the day before while he was off spending the evening in Maggie’s cleat.  She had indeed not been exaggerating her need for this kind of care last night.

            He gave particular attention to the sweet spot of her sole, where the wrinkles were deepest and the skin was most tender.  Irritating as it was for him to admit it, he had become rather adept at knowing what part of her foot his mother wanted massaged without her having to say, because he had the closest vantage point available to check out problem spots.

            Her smooth mature toes hung just above her son’s puny head, dancing and wriggling about.  They would occasionally settle down over his face, the marshmallowy underside of them caressing his cheeks, but it wasn’t too unpleasant because of the lilac gel she had so charitably applied to her feet earlier in the morning

            In fact, with the threat of his mother’s normally musky toe odor out of the way, there was a certain relaxing pleasure to be found in the smooth toes brushing against his forehead, like having leathery pillows brushed over his skin.

            Besides, being underneath his mother was far and away the preference at this moment.  Nancy came into the house on her own as she pleased for meetings, as Judy had been pulling up a set of files to show her manager on the computer.  This gave Scott a neat little opening to scurry into the office and bury himself under his mother’s weighty bare foot as it rested on the carpet before Nancy arrived, an act the senate candidate hopeful was only too happy to oblige.

            By the time Nancy had entered the room and asked where Scott was, he was already doing too good a job on his mother’s worn-out and peachy sole for Judy to surrender him just yet, and she had even laid her foot down a little more heavily onto her son’s body at the question, as if to claim her offspring definitively as her own against the newcomer.

            Scott didn’t want to admit it, but considering the circumstances, he was eternally grateful for that fierce maternal instinct of Judy’s just this one time.

            “So as I was saying last time,” Nancy continued.  “The party next week.  I know you’ve got it planned out just how you want, but I really feel we need to look at it again.  You know, gussy it up.  Make it bigger.”

            “Oh, I don’t know, Nancy,” Judy answered.  “I don’t want to give them the wrong idea about me.  Some of them we only just won over.  And I don’t want to chance it on thin ice.”

            “Still worried?” Nancy laughed.  “What’s it about now?”

            “A few things.  You know I had the webcam meeting with Techilogic last night, and, well… some of the same concerns are still there.”

            “Chicken feed.  We’ll handle that after the party.  Anything else?”

            “Well, you know, after my daughter’s… social media activity with Scott,” Judy mumbled uncomfortably.  “I know it was my own fault.  I saw her do it and didn’t even think much of it.  I… talked to her about it afterward to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but I still hadn’t realized how many… people could see that picture, and…”

            “Wake up, honey, and realize what century this is,” Nancy scoffed.  “Those things blow over faster than you can say celebrity nude leaks, and if you’re worried your rivals are going to pull that out of a hat at a bad moment, because I know you are worried about that, I guarantee you I can find another ten things from their camp to make them shut right up about it.”

            “Really?”

            “Please.  You know me, right?  Easy as pie.  I know people.  We can make things can go away when we need them to,” Nancy answered with a dismissive snort of laughter.  “And you know Emily has a talent for that, too.”

            Hearing this from under the table and his mother’s foot, Scott resolved with all his might not to be worried.  After all, Nancy had indeed managed to help quiet down the rumblings that began from Maggie’s Instagram photo of him, half in a doll dress and half in his birthday suit, thanks to her above-average PR skills and “a few phone calls,” as she’d so casually put it.  For the first and presumably only time in his life, he had a reason to be grateful to the woman.

            Yet his mind still wasn’t calmed by this conclusion.

            What the hell did Nancy mean “things can go away?”

            Was a capacity to play public relations like a harp enough to do what she was saying she could?

            Did he really want the answer?

            “Fair enough,” Judy sighed.  “But even so, the garden party still doesn’t need to be that big.  I’m trying to create an image here.  Plus, you know I’ve always had a soft spot for… smaller… things.”

            “I’m telling you, Judy, this is a most important part of it right now.  You want them to feel like your side is the place to be.  You’re not just some lady from the city council who got a couple changes made to the PMRD laws.  No, no, no.  What you’ve been doing isn’t just some little stint, it’s a huge deal: it’s reforming the American penal system for the better, and you want to play that up.  You want a shot at that candidacy, you’ve got to put your face into their heads as much as what you stand for.  So, I actually already took the liberty of adding a few extra attractions already for the party.”

            “What attractions?” Judy asked, a smirk creeping over her lips.  “This is in a week, you know.  I’m sure it wasn’t cheap.”

            “Don’t worry about the price yet, it was nothing much.  They’re rentals, anyway.  Extra catering location, bigger wait staff, some bonsai trees, a fountain.  Those kinds of things, just to spruce up the location.”

            “Okay, Nance, I agree with you on the idea of it, but bringing in a fountain just for the afternoon is a little much.  We’re not going with the fountain,” Judy insisted, fighting back another peal of laughter.  As she emphasized her words, she absentmindedly clasped her warm toes over Scott’s face, muffling his breathing for a few short seconds.

            Scott almost wanted to chuckle too.  That did sound excessive, even for his normally extravagant mother.

            “I’ll make you a deal,” Nancy whispered intently, leaning forward over the desktop.  “We drop the fountain, if you finally stop hogging your little foot-hugger boy and give me a turn with him.  You’re not the only one who walks around all day, you know.”

            Scott’s blood iced, and he felt Judy’s foot shifting its weight atop his chest, considering the option presented to her.  His muscles tensed and he made a snap decision at the cost of his humility, wrapping his arms around the sides of her foot and hugging it back down to him as closely as possible, which she responded to in kind by reversing her motion and flattening her entire womanly appendage back down on his body.

            The weight of his mom’s wide sole splaying down across his entire frame knocked the wind cleanly out of Scott’s chest and he wheezed for air.  Her heel was also pinning his member hard against his waist through his pants, but he managed to keep his arms wound as far around the rubbery rim of her foot as he could.  No matter how hard she stood on him, it was still better than the alternative.

            Above the table, Judy giggled with delight at what she was feeling beneath her.

            “What’s so funny?” Nancy inquired, raising an eyebrow curiously, her eyes darting beneath the desk.

            “Oh, nothing,” the matriarch sighed lovingly as Scott continued embracing her foot with all his meek might.  She laughed piteously again.  “I’m just enjoying him, okay?  You don’t have to rush me.”

            “You get him all the time, though, Judy.  Please?  I’m just aching.  You have no idea what I go through in these spikes,” she said, and on the other end of the desk, from his upside down perspective immobilized under his mother’s hulking foot, Scott could make out the sight of Nancy’s newly freed and dexterous toes flicking away her intimidating red stilettos to the carpet next to her.

            Her feet then stomped flat onto the ground with an imposing thump, her toes pinching at the carpet and her heels pivoting against it for relief from the restriction of her towering shoes.  Just as she was lacking Judy’s height and slightly fuller frame, Nancy’s feet weren’t as milky or rounded as Scott’s mother’s, and instead revealed several veins pressed to the smooth skin along the tanned tops.

            “It’s not my fault you insist on torturing yourself in those things, honey.  Maybe if you’d had your own kids, you wouldn’t have this problem,” Judy insisted smartly, getting an amused chuckle from Nancy at this last comment.  “Just kidding, of course.”

            Scott knew she was doing anything but kidding.

            Still, the turn of this conversation was hard to wrap his brain around.  He couldn’t believe how central he had become to what was happening above him.  Two grown professional women in middle age, previously discussing important matters of Judy’s political campaign, now arguing like hyperactive high school hotties over who had the right to smother a Barbie doll-sized college student under their silky soles.

            “C’mon, just for a few minutes.  We’ll chop the fountain right off this list,” Nancy wheedled, her feet bouncing a few inches off the ground excitedly at the prospect of it.

            “Oh, all right, you win,” Judy conceded.  “I am trying to teach him better manners so I can introduce him to more of my friends, after all.”

            No.  No.

            Shit.

            Scott thrashed awkwardly from the tension he’d been building up internally as his mother’s warm foot suddenly lifted off of him and left him exposed, a light frosting of sweat already on his skin after being pressure cooked under her sole for the past few tense minutes of negotiation with Nancy.

            Judy’s foot arched against the chair leg a few paces past the end of Scott’s feet, and he jumped up just in time to see Nancy crouching under the desk on the other side, her eyes wide and wild with glee.

            She lowered herself to her knees so that she could inch under the desk closer to the cowering form of Scott on the opposite end, still laid in front of Judy’s feet, but no longer under her direct protection.

            “Hey, babe,” Nancy babbled in a degradingly bubble-gum voice, waving a well-manicured hand at him before extending her arm fully and beckoning him to her with her slender fingers.  “Come see your favorite Auntie Nancy.”

            It briefly crossed Scott’s mind to scramble backwards and throw himself down against the top of Judy’s foot in a last-ditch effort, but he knew this would only elicit a shared chortle between the two ladies, followed by his mother peeling him off of her foot by force and handing him over to Nancy, who would then have even more ammo with which to break him down.

            “Nance, while it’s on my mind, I wanted to show you something Techilogic sent me during the call last night.  I’ll be right back.  Go ahead and get Scott started.  He’s here to lend a helping hand, after all,” Judy instructed happily, rising to her feet and marching out of the office without a second glance at the son she’d just left at the mercy of the county’s most aggressive cougar.

            “Wait, Mom…” Scott muttered with a hopeless peep under his breath before turning to look toward Nancy again, who by now had crawled further under the desk and, with no Judy there to question her breach of social etiquette, quickly wrapped her fingers around Scott’s sides and scooped him off the carpet before he had time to blink.

Nancy leaned back in her chair, now left alone with her plaything in Judy’s office.  She brought Scott into her lap, keeping one hand behind his back to prevent him from trying to crawl away.

            “Well, little mister, now that we’ve got a minute alone…” Nancy began, her words slurred and of a deeper tenor than when Judy was present, clearly with sultry intent behind every chewable syllable directed at Scott.  “Why don’t you tell me a little about your situation?”

            Slightly perplexed by the question, Scott tried to ignore the feeling of Nancy’s fingertips stroking casually along his back, and cleared his throat.  “What do you mean, Mrs. Dugan?”

            “Call me Nancy, babe.”

            “But… I, um…”

            “We’re both adults here.  You may be a little younger than me, but I think we can speak to one another on the same level.  Even if your level is more like ankle level for me most of the time,” she enthused, holding back a peppy giggle.

            “Um, okay, if you’re sure,” Scott gulped.  “Nancy.”

            At the mention of her name, Nancy’s thighs seemed to quiver and shift together beneath Scott’s crossed legs, her quadriceps clenching, and her lips pursed together in a provocative pucker for the briefest instant before she recomposed herself.

            “See?  That’s not so hard, is it?”

            “No, not really.”

            “Which I bet isn’t something you can say for most things at your size.  I mean, what is it that you can really do like this?” she asked.  Nancy’s hand behind Scott’s back had worked its way up to the top of his head, and she was gingerly thumbing through his shaggy hair.  “You know, besides the fabulous foot rub you’re going to give me soon?”

            Scott’s skin prickled at the older woman’s petting on top of his head.  At first he’d been apprehensive of being violated under the desk by her toes, but now he was seeing that being in her lap with her undivided and dexterous attention where she could poke and play with him was far worse.

            “Um, besides that?  Well, mostly just… cleaning up.  Dusting, picking up trash, and getting into some of the crawl spaces,” he answered, afraid to move in any one direction too far for fear of having Nancy’s fingers clasp to new places on his body as a defensive maneuver.

            He was glad Judy had given him this t-shirt and shorts after his bath, but even with them on, he felt incredibly vulnerable in Nancy’s lap, more so even than being completely nude in his mother’s grasp.

            “I suppose that doesn’t sound so bad,” Nancy commented, nodding her head.  “Still, it must get… tiring for you, being around here.  Having your mommy and sissy and little brother telling you what to do all the time, never giving you a break.”

            “S-Sometimes,” Scott said, flinching as Nancy’s fingers caressed back down to his shoulder blades again.  “I manage.”

            “It must just start to drive you crazy.”

            “C-Crazy?” Scott stammered, turning around to look at Nancy’s hand as it stroked against his back, hoping his clear recognition of it would embarrass her enough to stop, but of course it did no such thing.

            “Well sure, who wouldn’t feel like that?  I mean, you’re a young man.  You were in college.  I understand you must have urges that have to go… unfulfilled most of the time.”

            Now reaching previously unforeseen levels of anxiety, Scott realized she was not going to let this topic go, and his best chance was to defuse it rather than avoid it entirely.  “A little, I guess.  But, I mean, I… I have a… girlfriend.”

            “Yes, I know you do.  And I heard she’s really pretty.  Ella, right?” Nancy drawled, her words measured and explanatory as though talking to a slow three-year-old.  Her fingers were steadily curling under the opening of Scott’s shirt behind his back, her nails feeling cold against his skin.  “But I hear she doesn’t come around to visit you so often anymore, hmm?”

            Scott sighed, not bothering to deny it vocally, already feeling too drained on the matter to care.

            It was true.  His girlfriend Ella, who already went to college in a different state, had had little to do with him after his drunk driving incident.  She hadn’t showed up while he was on trial or even in the intervening time afterward, not even for a five-minute talk on where they stood.

            In fact, they’d hardly spoken.  A terse phone conversation three weeks ago had taken place where Scott at least had the chance to express how much he missed her and hoped she’d come to visit him.

            Her tone dry and complacent, and quite clearly holding back some emotion with great effort, she’d said she needed some time to think after what happened and requested that he leave her alone until she contacted him again.

            He’d counted himself lucky for that brief contact.  Most of his friends from school had avoided speaking to him entirely, and those that did had simply said that they hoped everything worked out for the best before entering radio silence.

            “I’m right, aren’t I?” Nancy confirmed for herself at the wilting sight of the little young man’s visible dismay as he slumped down in her lap.  “Thought so.”

            In the pause, then, Nancy’s fingers began sliding upward on Scott’s shirt, quickly working it up his abdomen and up to his shoulders, forcing his arms above his head to avoid getting stuck.

            “Mrs. Du- I mean, Nancy!” Scott yelped suddenly, grabbing at the shirt to prevent it from being taken as it was suddenly pulled inside out around his head.  “What are y-y-you…”

            “Don’t get excited, babe, I just want you to be comfortable,” she insisted as she began working the shirt upward.  She could feel him pulling back down on the shirt in a desperate bid to keep it on, but the strength of both his arms was no match for the fingers of Nancy’s right hand bunched up together and tugging in tandem.  A few seconds later, the paltry t-shirt was stripped from Scott’s torso, which Nancy casually flung to the carpet below, well out of his grasp.

            “I’m n-not getting excited!” the newly shirtless Scott answered, swallowing hard and growing more nervous by the second.

            It wasn’t even the prospect of what he knew had to be coming soon that scared him, but rather the fact that Nancy was, by being in the Stevens household and with Judy’s full permission, still well within legal protection to do to him what she was doing at this very second.  He could ask her to stop, sure, but if she said no, then the case was closed.

            “If you’re not excited, then quit fidgeting so much,” she suggested warmly, grinning at him and snickering girlishly.  Her fingers slid down his chest, testing the toughness of his abs with her thumb, before halting at the waistband of his shorts.  “Now, let’s get a look at the rest of you, okay?”

            “B-B-But Nancy, p-please, I…” Scott whimpered, grabbing weakly at the woman’s probing fingers in an effort to dissuade her from going further.  With nothing coming to mind, he told the biggest lie possible: “I’m already comfortable!”

            “I find that very hard to believe, with all the twitching you’re doing,” Nancy countered, her fingers burrowing down into the shorts as she started working them down Scott’s thighs.  He clamped his legs together to slow her progress, but it didn’t do much.  She was obviously skilled at what she was doing, despite his best efforts to halt her success, and soon his shorts were off and flicked to the floor, leaving him only in his underwear in Nancy’s lap.

            Her skill almost made him wonder if she’d practiced with a doll before arriving at the house.  Either that, or her previous fling had liked things small and kinky.

            “Now why are you still making such a fuss about it?  I’m doing all the work, after all,” she chuckled.

            “Because I don’t need this!” Scott wheezed with exasperation.  “I’m fine.  Really.  I can handle myself.  I… I mean, I…”  His words caught in his throat with surprise as he felt Nancy’s hands scooping him up under his rear end and back, cradling him off of her lap and closer to her face.

            She smiled, shaking her head and wrinkling her nose with adoration at the sight of him, stripped down to his skivvies and reclining across her palms, and leaned her face in.  Her rich auburn locks hung loosely down over Scott in a menacing canopy as she loomed, her lips plaited and primed for action.

            Scott felt the air rush from his lungs with shock as Nancy took a deep breath and plastered her puckered lips flush against his firm abdomen.

            She started off slowly, kissing in gentle pecks in quick succession that each smacked deliciously against his skin.  After that, she got more involved, letting the frothy saliva from within her mouth moisten each kiss until she was essentially massaging Scott’s abdomen with her cushy, slippery lips.

            And then she really got to work.  Letting her tongue lap out against Scott’s flat stomach in between kisses, Nancy continued to messily smooch the twenty-one-year-old’s toned form with lustful smacks of her lips and such tender attention that she could actually feel his heart rate increasing dramatically through his chest.

            All the young man could do was go limp in her hands as she went to town on his body, kissing all around his firm navel with carnal abandon and letting her tongue tap hungrily against his flesh.

            And not even Scott could deny to himself how damned good it felt.

            With a pop of her lips, Nancy removed her mouth from Scott’s stomach and tilted her head to the side, examining him from head to toe, and grinning triumphantly at what she saw trying to burst out of his underwear.

            Scott made no motion to stop her.  It would’ve been absolutely impossible to hide the eager boner he was now sporting in his boxers from Nancy’s talent.

            He had failed her test from the very moment she pressed her lips to his body.

            Nancy was right.  About everything.

            Having Ella gone from his life had left Scott feeling pent-up and agitated deep in his loins.  He had tried masturbating in the bathroom a couple of times just for some relief, but it wasn’t enough, and every creak of the doors outside made him horrified he would be caught in the act.  The close calls when his mother or sister would hold and play with him up in the nude didn’t help matters, given how sexually frustrated he was becoming, and he was practically to the point that the sight of any girl who was even remotely attractive could turn him on.  And now he had a woman like this: sultry, liberated, and powerful holding him in her sexy manicured hands while she laid wet kisses on his body just a few inches above his crotch.

            How could any man, let alone one as sexually strung out as Scott, hope to have a chance of lying about it?

            “So let’s get something straight now, babe,” Nancy murmured, lapping her tongue across her lips.  She lowered Scott further down toward her chest again so that her mouth was only an inch away from his tiny right ear.

            “Seriously, don’t try to tell me you don’t need this, because you and I both know you do,” she uttered in a ravenous whisper, her words grave and absolutely dripping with animal sensuality.  “And however well you think you “handle yourself,” it’s nothing compared to what I can do, and what you know very well I can do to you.  Believe me, I get what I want, one way or another.”

            “N-N-N…” Scott peeped, unable to get out even a full syllable, as his body quivered in the woman’s grasp with a combination of terror and unbridled arousal.

            He believed fully every word that spilled from between her wet lips, especially after her earlier remarks about taking care of the little spill Maggie’s Instagram had created as though it was a simple hurdle to hop effortlessly over.  They’d seemed like distant blips on his personal radar, but now the threatening words were bright flashing red lights in his brain.  There was no doubting not only Nancy’s belief in her words, but her ability to make them happen.

            If she could get a whole state to see things her way, how much trouble could it be to sway one tiny young man too weak to stop her from stripping him to his underwear?

            “I’m being nice to you like this, Scott, because I’ve known you for a long time and I like your body, but you shouldn’t forget your place,” Nancy warned, pressing her thumb against the obvious bulge in Scott’s pants, sorely pinning his erect member against his waist.  “One way or another, you are going to play with me.  Either as my boy toy, or maybe just a toy.  Soon enough, you’ll understand just how much.  And we both know you’re going to like it,” she whispered conclusively, her words slurring together so closely they were barely distinguishable.

            Scott felt Nancy’s tongue slither out from between her lips and lick at the edge of his ear as a final ultimatum of her intent.

            “I’m back!” called out Judy from the hallway just as she came back through the doorway, sliding through the swinging French doors and sauntering back to the desk, just as Nancy lowered Scott back into her lap.

            “Hey, Judy.  Find what you were looking for?”

            “Yes I did.  Sorry about the wait.  I thought I left the copies on my dresser, but I guess I’d moved them,” Judy said with a carefree shrug, placing the papers on the desktop and returning to her seat.  She leaned forward and placed her hand over her mouth to silence a snicker at the sight of her son perched on the woman’s lap.  “You two getting better acquainted?”

            “You might say that.  Scott’s just been telling me a little about the fine work he’s been doing for you guys here,” Nancy reported casually, clasping her hands around Scott’s bare sides and lowering him back to the carpet.

            “I’m sure he has,” Judy said with an assuring nod, quickly glancing down at her defrocked son on the carpet.  “Missing your doll dress-up days a little there, were you, Nance?”  Judy’s tone wasn’t accusing in the slightest, but rather comically teasing.

            “You know it, sister,” Nancy confirmed, crossing her legs and settling back into her chair.  “And where else can you get service like this, after all?”

            Nancy’s foot, pungent and aching from her leather stiletto prisons, tackled Scott to the carpet with a pounding heave to the chest.

            He hardly had time to catch his breath again before the feminine predator was pouncing down onto him.  The fact that his member was still fully erect meant a sharp pang resounded through to his core as Nancy’s sole flattened itself comfortably over his whole body like a damp mattress.  Her digits curled around his head and squeezed his face into the deepest crevice of her leathery big toe, making every inhalation a foul whiff of oily, putrid hell.

            And with a sigh of resigned bitterness to himself as he began obediently kneading his hands into the woman’s hot, swollen foot flesh, Scott still knew full well he was far safer down here under her feet than up there in her hands.

            Scott’s heart railed against his ribcage and his breathing became shallower as he peered around the corner of the hallway and into the kitchen.

            The coast was clear.  Maggie was nowhere in sight.

            Sighing with quaking unease, he walked into the room, though quickly took cover again behind the island counter.

            This was no way to live.  He’d successfully spent the last twenty-four hours totally avoiding the tyrannical grasp of the towering sixteen-year-old, and but it hadn’t been easy.  She’d been gone most of the previous afternoon and evening, too, at a party with her soccer team for winning the championship.  All he had to do was make it through the rest of today and then she’d be gone at school for most of the weekdays.  Then he’d be safe.

            Until the next weekend, at least, and then he’d have to be on his guard for the next week.

            And the next year.

            And however long he was trapped here.

            He knew he was just fooling himself.  Judy was out of the house for most of the day, so he couldn’t rely on the same docile tactics of before to gain protection from her.  And of course Kyle didn’t give a damn what Maggie decided to do with their older brother.

            Sooner or later his little sister was going to get her greedy hands back on him, and then there was no escaping the bath she’d been threatening since Friday night.  The inevitability of it made the young man even more paranoid than every random sound heard throughout the house that he assumed to be Maggie’s feet stomping around in search of him.

            And though she was no longer a physical threat to him in the house, his encounter with Nancy the day before had put Scott on an anxiety installment plan that was compounding with interest every hour.  Worst of all was that he knew he was just as afraid of the domineering woman’s sultry threats as he was of the fact, in reality, he knew his baser instincts didn’t really want him to resist her advances.  The feeling of her warm, glistening lips pressed against his chest as her tongue slurped with such practiced form along his skin was still lingering in his synapses, and every time he allowed himself to return to the memory for some relief, the criminalizing bulge appeared back in his pants.

            It was turning into a complicated couple of days, to say the least.

            Scott held his hand against his chest and tried to slow his breathing, his forehead clammy from the nerves.  For once, it was something of a burden that his mother had returned him to his maximum height of twelve inches after Nancy had left the day before.  It made him a much easier target for anyone on the hunt for him, especially since the t-shirt and shorts provided for him were an oddly bright blue color like that of a highlighter.  Given how often he was disrobed purely for the humiliating entertainment of the women in his life, any other time Scott would’ve been grateful, but now it was just making him feel like he had Christmas lights coiled around his sides.

            The sudden ringing of the kitchen phone on the wall far above him jolted Scott’s heart back into overdrive, but he managed to stop himself from yelping in surprise.  He was way too tightly wound, and he knew it, but there was also no helping it.

            Out of a desire to further distract himself from the biting nerves, Scott peered upward and squinted in an effort to read the caller ID letters flashing in dim, blocky text.  Blinking to ensure he was seeing correctly, Scott’s heart resumed skipping just as quickly as before.

            “ELLA-STENSON” read the line along with the number as the phone rang again.

            It couldn’t be, and yet he knew it had to be, because Scott’s girlfriend’s number was imprinted obsessively in his mind, along with every detail of her face and the tone of her voice.

            She was trying to connect.

            This was his chance.  Slim as it was, based on the last conversation he’d had with his girlfriend, this was his chance to get some kind of emotional respite, if only through a brief phone conversation.  More than anything, Scott wanted some time to be with his girlfriend in person and try hopelessly to explain all the chaos that had occurred in the last few months, but if nothing else, he just wanted to speak to her.  He just had to hear her voice.

            Before acting, the young man felt a brief flash of panic.  Judy had strictly forbidden use of the phone for him, and though she wasn’t even in the house, the very idea of her marching back in at this very instant still seemed startlingly plausible.

            It wouldn’t be the first time the woman had returned home at the exact wrong moment to witness her son’s disallowed activities and not taken it at all well.

            Throat dry and heart fluttering, Scott forced the risk from his mind and grabbed ahold of the lower cabinet knobs of the counters.  He began pulling himself up with incredible zeal.  If he could just reach the countertop, he would be able to wrestle the phone off its stand and answer.  He wouldn’t need to talk for long, just for a few minutes to hear Ella’s voice, and no one would be the wiser.

            The grips were narrow and Scott could feel himself slipping, but time was short before the phone went to a voice message, and he was determined.  He nearly lost his grasp, but managed to swing his arm up and wrap it around the oven latch for support just in time, made more confident by the continued ringing.  The marble surface of the countertop was in reach.

            He could make it.

            The swift force of Scott’s t-shirt being jerked backward by unseen fingers instantly released him from his tenuous hold on the oven latch, and he plopped the short drop back to the floor.  With an uncomfortable smack he landed on his rear end, the phone ringing in his ears again, but with a blurry distance.

            Batting his eyes and groaning from developing soreness in his body, Scott lay on his back and looked straight up just in time to see the youthfully wrinkled ceiling of pink flesh belonging to the sole of his little sister’s bare foot lowering itself down onto him.

            “Maggie, please, NO!” Scott screeched in desperation as he threw his arms up, knowing he was running out of seconds to get the call.

            His sister’s meaty toes collided with his face and began kneading around his head, encroaching his nose and mouth in a damp crevice of feminine skin.  The girl’s sole happily splayed itself down across her brother’s small torso, entirely unimpeded by his raised arms.

            At twelve inches tall, the helplessly prone Scott wasn’t quite short enough to be completely buried under Maggie’s foot, but with her doughy toes wrestling his head, the ball of her foot teasing to collapse his chest cavity, and her firm heel poised terrifyingly above his crotch, she was able to exert just about all the control she could need over her trembling older sibling.  The pressure she was placing on him was barely a fraction of what she was capable of.

            Heartbroken and subdued, Scott watched upward with crushing dismay between two of his sister’s writhing toes as they casually played with his face.   She plucked the phone from the wall and brought it to her ear, not even bothering to look back down at her defeated brother again as she pinned him to the ground like a rodent.

            “Oh my God, Ella, it’s been so long!  How are you?” Maggie gushed, grinning and giggling excitedly into the phone.

            Coughing weakly against the barrage of earthy stenches emanating from the fleshy undersides of Maggie’s toes, Scott struggled to gain his composure and think clearly enough to find out a way to salvage this moment.

            He supposed it was slightly to his advantage that Maggie had always liked Ella, which was probably what made her willing to pick up the phone in the first place, but that simple fact wouldn’t stop her from making things even more destructive for Scott.

            Nor would it probably stop her from spilling the beans about Scott’s attempted breaking of the rules to Judy.

            That fact alone was enough to halt his struggling altogether in pre-emptive overthrow.

            “Oh, nothin’ much, just lots of school and soccer.  Boys?  Ha!  They wish…” Maggie droned on, scrunching her toes together on the sudden burst of laughter and darkening Scott’s entire world for a sickening second.  As the conversation continued, she placed her free hand authoritatively upon her hip.

            “What’s Scott up to around here?” Maggie chuckled, obviously repeating a question Ella had posed.  As she pondered the sentence, at long last the bratty blonde teen looked downward toward the floor and made eye contact with her brother, winking at his disgusted little face wedged partially between two of her squirming toes.

            She arched the ball of her foot upward ever so slightly, allowing more regular airflow for Scott’s lungs, which he reacted to by entering into a flurry of coughing as he struggled to endure.

            “I wouldn’t really say he’s… up… to much of anything, really.”

            “Maggie, PLEASE!” Scott yelped once he’d managed to choke out a normal breath again, though the cold sweat on his brow continued as he was still keenly aware of the girl’s thick heel positioned squarely over his crotch and ready to drop at any second.  “Please give me the phone.”

            “Oh, you know, nothing crazy.  He just has to do whatever we say, is all.  It’s no big deal, really.  He’s usually less than a foot tall, so there’s not much he can really do to help.  I mean, if he doesn’t do what we say, sometimes I have to teach him a lesson.  But Scott’s a smart little guy.  He’s learning how things work pretty quickly,” Maggie reported gleefully, resuming her complete ignorance of Scott’s existence once again.

            “Maggie, please, I’m… I’m begging you!” Scott peeped meekly, his voice cracking from desperation.  “Please let me talk to Ella!”

            “You want to talk to Scott?” Maggie stated loudly, again repeating what she’d heard for the benefit of the floor-bound sibling, and a triumphant smirk spread over her lips, her eyes glowing with the glorious victory of this moment.

            She arched her foot off of Scott’s body for the first time in the past few minutes, but before he had the chance to try and inch away or even speak, she was lowering it back down again.

            Pointing her flexible big toe downward with practiced dexterity, Maggie perfectly aligned the squishy pad of the toe with her brother’s nearly-weeping face and pressed down, cutting off his means of protest.

            Scott gagged as the cushiony globe of his little sister’s toe caved against his face, flooding every brain cell with an emergent desire to escape and every sense with the foul essence of Maggie’s musky flesh.

            The subtle ridges of her toe print teased poisonously against his lips and he sputtered, desperate for air and release from the girl’s power to make him stay wherever she wanted him.  The rest of his body was freed from the oppressive mattress-like burden of Maggie’s clammy sole, but because her big toe was pressed squarely to his face, he wasn’t going anywhere.

            “I don’t think that’s possible right now, actually,” Maggie continued nonchalantly from far above.  “Scott’s kind of under some new management right now, and I don’t think he’d be able to speak right now.  Yeah, sure, I’ll tell him you called.”

            No.  No.  No.

            The cloying darkness and repulsive scents leaked from Maggie’s pores recycling themselves in Scott’s head like a drug began to settle him into more of a panic.  It intensified briefly as he heard his sister laugh for a few more seconds, before deflating fully at the sound of the hung phone being slammed back into its charger, the conversation concluded.

            Finally, with hope adequately drained from her victim, Maggie removed her toe from Scott’s face and planted her foot down next to the other with a fleshy slap against the hardwood that rattled the floor, a mere few inches from the ends of Scott’s legs.

            “Oh, don’t look so sad, little brother.  It’s not the end of the world.  Trust me, I was doing you a favor there,” Maggie declared, crossing her arms and letting some false concern trickle into her words.

            Scott remained silent and didn’t even bother sitting up from his prone, defeated position before his sister’s statuesque visage that loomed above.

            Even if his hopes of speaking to Ella hadn’t been shattered, and even if he wasn’t now positive that Maggie would be able to hold this little event over his head with the threat of Judy’s awareness, he felt paralyzed to be lying before his little sister.  Gazing down at him, she was so sweetly unassuming and still so full of mad power, like the recklessly omnipotent daughter of a mythical goddess.

            In many ways, she was exactly that.

            “How?” Scott croaked at last.

            “You just let me worry about that, okay?  Now c’mere, my itty bitty boy,” Maggie cooed adoringly as she bent toward the ground and clasped her palm to her brother’s abdomen, scooping him from the floor like a ragdoll and cuddling him against her chest.  “We’ve got a few things to get straight between you and me.”

            Scott held his breath, trying to remain calm, and focused very hard on not writhing with terror as his little sister clutched his fragile twelve-inch frame against her chest like a baby and marched through the house toward the second floor staircase.

            As usual for the warmer weather, Maggie was dressed in a flirty spaghetti strap summer dress to show off her smooth shoulders and let her neckline dive a little further down.  This one was patterned with various shades of teal and green, contrasting with her oceanic eyes.  She was also clad in a pair of short jeans that put her carefully toned thighs and tanned legs on full display.  And, as was so common for the free-spirited Maggie while relaxing at home on the weekends, there was no bra on underneath.

            With precious little left to his imagination, Scott found himself once again bear-hugged against his sister’s cleavage as she cradled him, with only the thin fabric of the dress separating them now.  With her hand scooped under his butt, she was keeping her tiny brother curled more tightly to her person than was necessary, and Scott was keenly aware of it as the side of his face was pressed heavily against the warm skin further up his little sister’s perky breast.

            He was squeezed so close to her body, he could feel her heart pumping in his ears, faster and faster with each passing minute.

            Of course, this wildly uncomfortable botheration was nothing next to what he feared was coming.

            She had him now.  Judy was out of the house and couldn’t save him.  Maggie could march right into the bathroom right now, strip him, soap him, and spend an inordinate amount of time rubbing him down while simultaneously giving Scott some answers about her psychological development that he would trade just about anything in the world to avoid being involved in firsthand.

            He felt on the verge of exasperated tears as his sister shouldered her way into her bedroom and kicked the door closed with a hard slam from her heel, already confirming some of his fears with the drive in her stride.  Proceeding to the bed, she flopped down onto it and leaned back against the wall, but made no attempt to release her captive from her overly familiar embrace.

            Muscles tensed, Scott shivered uncontrollably as the fear mixed unhealthily with the adrenaline, knowing his sister would feel it fully, but also knowing it didn’t matter at this point.

            “You can stop looking so messed up now, Scott,” Maggie commented at last with a curious frown, smiling down at him out of the corner of her mouth.  “I’m… not going to give you a bath.”

            “Oh.”

            “Mom said I can’t give you any baths.  She said even though it’s not unreasonable, that you should be mostly responsible for your own cleaning, and that it’s different for her to do it because she’s the mom and I’m not.”

            “Oh?” Scott repeated simply, working very hard to keep from sounding too desperately relieved.

            “Nope.  So you don’t have to make a big deal about it anymore.”

            “Oh, um… okay.”

            “But you know what the funny part is, Scott?” Maggie simpered, suddenly pursing her lips and hushing her tone down to a near whisper.

            Scott shook his head back and forth, too mortified to manage a spoken response.

            “I didn’t even mention that I was going to do that to Mom.  At all.  Like, she just kinda… knew it!  Pretty funny, huh?” Maggie snickered with sickening disingenuousness.

            “She, um… maybe she just thought I might need one soon, and... and wanted to make sure I’m d-doing my own p-part to take care of myself,” Scott mumbled awkwardly, afraid to look his little sister in the eye, even though he could feel her baby blue irises burning a hole in the top of his head with their intensity as she gazed questioningly down at him in her arms.

            Scott felt cold and hollow despite the warmth emanating from his sister’s clammy hands and shirt, all hugged so tightly around him in her possessive, threatening grasp as her eyes continued working him over at such close range.

            FBI interrogators had nothing on this girl.

            “Sure, but you know what else?  I thought this was the funniest thing of all.  She also made sure to tell me I can’t wear you during games anymore.  Even though I told her you were only down there for part of it.  Funny how she just knew that, huh?”

            “Maybe she just guessed from the bruises,” Scott peeped pathetically, foregoing tact out of defeat and shutting his eyes to prepare for whatever consequence he was certain was coming for him now.

            “Maybe!” Maggie seemed to agree for the moment before biting her lip and shaking her head in disbelief.  “Or maybe, for some reason, she’s started taking suggestions from certain people who really don’t have the right to be making suggestions.  How about that?  Is that possible, too?”

            The sweat collecting on his brow, Scott opened his mouth and tried not to whimper: “M-Maggie, look, I… I… d-didn’t…”

            Before he could get the rest out, the girl’s pointer finger was pressed against Scott’s lips, silencing him.  “Hush.  I get it, really,” Maggie insisted brightly.  “I mean, she’s got a point.  Maybe I got a little carried away, having you playing down there in my sock the whole time.  You gotta last us, after all.  And plus, I bet you just want to handle your own self sometimes.  And I… guess that’s fine.”

            Scott would’ve done a double take if he had liberated motion of any kind at his disposal. He could hardly keep up with the flip-flopping tactics of his sister, let alone try to decipher where she was going with her wild head games.

            “R-Really?” Scott gawked, too confused to muster anything more intelligent.

            “Yeah.  Why not?” Maggie chuckled, leaning her head down closer to Scott’s face.  “You’re here to learn from your mistakes instead of getting beat up in jail.  That’s why you’re staying back at home, you know?  So maybe I was too rough on you.  I’m the big one and you’re the little one, after all, so I have to make sure you don’t get skooshed.  Maybe… I should’ve been thinking about how you were doing more.”

            “Uh-huh,” Scott mumbled dumbly as he attempted to discern what kind of alien parasite had chewed through his sister’s brain to cause her to admit fault of some sort without any trace of irony.  He squinted at her, scanning for some twitching imperfection or curl of a lip to indicate that she was about to burst into peals of laughter at her elaborate joke, but he saw nothing.  Sure, she wasn’t exactly groveling on her knees for having stamped bruises into him for an entire game, but it was still by far the closest thing to an apology he knew he’d ever receive from her.

            His befuddlement even allowed him to ignore the fact that his body was now bobbing up and down while still being cupped pretty tightly against Maggie’s chest as she cradled him.

            “So that’s settled, then.  No more riding with me for games.  But I’ll give you fair warning about one thing, Scott.  Even with Mom’s silly little rule about baths and your silly little pride, if things get too…” she whispered throatily, before pressing her lips against the top of Scott’s head and planting a moist kiss in his hair, “…dirty, I may just have to do a little clean-up on you anyway.”

            Scott trembled again, horrifyingly confused and eerily comforted by this roller coaster of a conversation.  Against his shoulder, he could once again feel Maggie’s firmed nipple prodding at him through the fabric of the dress, and at once he realized why she’d been rubbing him so precisely against her breast.

            He fought back a dry heave at this realization.

            “Understand?” Maggie hissed as she held her head high again, letting her mouth hang idly open while her tongue bounced between the top and bottom rows of her pristine teeth.

            “Y-Y-Yes,” Scott stammered, unable to hide the fear in his voice and only barely able to stop some dangerously oncoming tears from changing his tone.

            “That’s my favorite little doll-boy brother,” Maggie chimed happily, running a pinky finger through Scott’s hair and brushing it lovingly, using the moisture from her kiss to part his locks more smoothly.  “I like it when you say “yes” to me.  It makes it so much easier.  For both of us.”

            “Uh-huh,” Scott whimpered, lowering his head, too strung out to look Maggie in the eyes again as they made their way up the stairs.

            “For example…” Maggie chirped playfully.  She lowered him away from her chest and sat him down in front of her on the bed where she slowly circled her legs around him to prevent him from moving.  She pinched her fingertips around one of Scott’s tiny hands as well to discourage escape.  “I know you gotta want to be able to talk to Ella again.  I could help make that happen.  If you acted the right way.”

            At this, Scott felt the temperature in his blood rise just a little bit higher, and it wasn’t just from the humiliation of having his sister threaten to scissor lock him between her thighs.

            Boy, did she know how to hit where it hurt.

            “You… you mean you’re…”

            “What?”

            “You mean you’re not going to tell… Mom?  About the phone?”

            Maggie snickered, tilting her head piteously.  “Well, I didn’t say that for sure.  I might still, if you can’t chill out around me a little more.  I think that’s fair.  What do you think?”

            “Uh-huh,” he mumbled, having to hide his shock that the girl apparently wasn’t going to take this information directly to the worst possible pair of ears.

            “Think about it a little, little brother,” she continued smarmily.  “You’re not reaching that phone on your own with us around.  You know Kyle won’t help you.  He’s too mad at you still.  Who else is gonna do it?”

            “Mom?” Scott suggested boldly.

            Maggie threw her head back, letting her hair toss smoothly across her face, and let out a girlish cackle.

            “Are you serious?” she laughed.  “You know her rule for you with the phone.  What do you think she’d do to you if she found out you were about to break it?”

            “I don’t know,” Scott sighed, deciding quickly that contesting the point with his sister wasn’t going to go anywhere.  As much as he wanted to believe his mother’s recently more cordial behaviors were a sign of changing times for them, he was also all-too familiar with Judy’s famous ability to change her presentation of herself on a dime.  The odds were far too flimsy for him to risk a phone call around her, even on her best day.  “You’re right.”

            “Of course I’m right,” the girl confirmed triumphantly.  She ran a fingertip across the top of his head again, tilting her head to the side slightly as she did so.  “So maybe we can come up with a little deal.”

            “What kind of deal?” Scott asked bluntly.

            “The kind where if you promise not to tell Mom about stuff, I’ll promise not to tell her about stuff too,” Maggie crooned with a wink as she stroked her brother’s hair again.  “Easy as that.”

            “Promise not to tell her about what stuff?” Scott uttered with increasing emptiness, lowering his head in a feeble attempt to escape his sister’s caresses, but to no avail.

            “Oh, who knows?  I’m not psychic, Scotty,” Maggie said with a shrug.  Running her extended index and middle fingers along the tip of her sticky tongue with a dramatic slide, she dabbed the moisture vigorously into his hair to part it again.  He shivered but didn’t fight her.  “You know me.  I just take things as they… come.”

            Without needing to add any further comment, the sixteen-year-old master manipulator lifted her legs back up over her cowering brother and slid her way off the bed.  Scott remained lying obediently in a rumpled bundle of his sister’s bright pink blankets like a lapdog, her spit drying into his hair, while a vegetative state of despondent stoicism overtook him.

            It had been a mercifully quiet Monday morning for Scott, leaving him with plenty of silence and solitude to stew in his vast range of current fears.  Maggie and Kyle were off at school, and Judy had been in her study with the door shut for three hours on a variety of webcam meetings.

            Having worked at an incredibly diligent pace as an escape from the various worries plaguing his mind, Scott had finished up his daily housework jobs just after noon, and found himself with a short reprieve.  Undoubtedly, his mother would find more work for him once she finally emerged from the office, but until then, he had some aimless quiet in which to become even more paranoid.

            He didn’t want to have to imagine what Maggie had been getting at the day before with her cringingly suggestive offer to him to actually go around Judy’s rules and let him place a call to Ella.  Since she obviously did seem to be respecting their mother’s decree, for whatever bizarre reason, that both baths and soccer games in-shoe were out, the options were suddenly limited and far more frightening for how unknowable they were.

            All he could do was imagine she would find something even worse to hold over his head in exchange for a simple two or three minute phone call, just because she had the power to do so.

            Out of desperation, Scott had gone to his brother, whom he hadn’t spoken to one-on-one in a month since Kyle’s tacit rejection of aid during the house arrest, and the most recent conversation hadn’t gone much better than the last.

            “Hey,” Scott had murmured innocently as he meandered into the lanky fifteen-year-old’s bedroom.  “Can I say something real quick?”

            “Fine,” breathed Kyle disinterestedly, his eyes unmoving from the Popular Science magazine he had his nose buried in as he reclined on his bed.  “What?”

            “I just… wanted to know.  If there was anything you needed.  Drink, snack, clean up the room.  Whatever.  I’m on it, you know?”

            “Uh-huh.  Yeah.  I’ll let you know,” Kyle deadpanned back.  Both knew full well no such request would be issued.

            “I’m serious, though.  Whatever you need, I’m here to help.”

            “What are you doing?” the taller boy groaned back, finally sparing a glance away from his magazine.

            “Nothing.  Not doing anything.  Just wanted to check in and see if you needed anything I could help with.”

            “You know I won’t do that.  I don’t need your help.  With anything.  Can you go now?  I’m trying to read,” Kyle mumbled.

            “Sure, sure, sure.  No problem.  Sorry about it, just…” Scott continued as he wandered further into the bedroom, determined not to be defeated just yet in his goal.

            “What?” Kyle blurted finally, tearing his gaze fully away from the pages.  “Just say it already, whatever it is.”

            “I just… wanted to know, if there was ever any way I could… get you to help me out with something.”

            “Me?  Help you?” Kyle scoffed under his breath.

            “Just one time.”

            “What?”

            “A phone call, for like two minutes.  That’s all.”

            Kyle’s eyes narrowed and he snorted before shaking his head in disbelief, then spoke up

up: “Mom said no phone calls for you.”

            “I know she did, but-”

            “She sat us both down, you know.  Maggie and I, and explained it all.  What you can and can’t do, and she was pretty clear about it all.  About… what happens if you get around to doing what you’re not supposed to,” Kyle droned.

            “What do you mean?”

            “What do you think I mean?  She looked us in the eye and said we’re going down to your level if we get into anything funny.”

            “I… I know that, but… but look, if it just happened while she was gone, there’d be no way in hell she’d find out about it, I’d be quick, and-”

            “It’s not just that,” Kyle hissed in interruption.  “You know it’s not just that.”

            “I… do.  God, I just… I just need a break this one time.  Just this one time to call Ella.”

            Kyle’s eyes darted back to his brother, who by now was standing next to the bed and looking earnestly up at his younger sibling.

            “Haven’t you already screwed up enough women for this year?” the teen snarled quietly, causing Scott to instinctively hang his head.

            “I… I… c’mon, man, please, I…”

            “I said it before.  I’m not getting involved.  Look, I… know it sucks living here like you have to.  I’ve had to be down there too sometimes.  And I’m not going to add anymore to what happens to you here.  But this is what happens when you have to actually stand for the things you do,” Kyle continued before loudly ruffling the pages of his magazine and inching it closer to his face.  A frown seemed permanently etched into his face, almost forced, and his voice had quavered slightly; he was clearly not used to having to speak so aggressively to the brother he once so admired.  “Can you please leave me alone now?”

            Heart sunken just about as thoroughly as it could be, Scott quietly ambled back toward the door.

            “Scott,” came the hesitant voice behind him just as he was about to exit.  The twelve-inch delinquent peered back over his shoulder.

            “Listen, um… if they do stuff to you, and don’t give you your clothes back when they’re done… you know, I’ll get you some,” Kyle drawled, still with some bitterness in his words.  “They’d… give you clothes in jail.”

            “Okay,” Scott said with a nod, unable to keep a smile from forming.  “Thanks.”

            “But that’s all,” he answered as his eyes returned to the magazine spread while he thumbed over a page.

            Though pessimistically hopeful of this last comment by his brother, Scott knew the issue of the phone was all but decided, then.  If he wanted that call, Maggie was the only viable and willing outlet.  He couldn’t even be sure she’d keep her word, but as she was the closest thing he had at this point for the slimmest chance, it was a risk worth taking, no matter how sickening it ended up being having to pay it back.

            And then there was also the small matter of Nancy.  Scott had almost mentioned her demand to Judy several times the day before in a state of confused humiliation and half-hearted arousal, and finally, for reasons he was too ashamed to confront in himself just yet, resolved to stay silent on it for the time being.  He hated to think what it said about him, but at this point, he figured there was very little he could do to get himself lower, physically or otherwise.

            As he wandered around the house, savoring his bittersweet alone time, Scott clambered up onto the couch and was pleasantly surprised to find the remote control sitting on the cushion.  It was a royal pain having to hit the button on the TV if it wasn’t already in his reach, and Maggie took a certain delight in placing the remote up on the mantel when she was finished watching to prevent those shorter than her knees from using it, but apparently whoever had last used it had forgotten.  Just hoping to distract himself for a brief time, Scott pressed a fist into the power button and began flipping through the channels.

            As he skipped through the numbers faster than he could process the flashing images, he found himself suddenly pausing with an odd paralysis when the channel stopped on a recycled broadcast from a CNN report earlier in the morning, with a picture of a man leaning against a marble desktop.

            “No new developments on the search for Walter Brandon after the altercation he entered with police at his Chicago penthouse yesterday before fleeing the scene,” the anchor read from the teleprompter while adjusting her glasses.  “However, we are now getting more on the information we received this morning from Cambralart Financials as they attempt to get back on their feet.  Though we don’t have an official statement yet, we are hearing reports that Brandon, one of the firm’s top financiers, had personally defrauded an amount of one hundred and seventeen million dollars, putting the company itself at likely risk for criminal investigation as well.”

            The words meant nothing to Scott.  He hadn’t heard of the man and had only heard of the corporation in passing before, yet something else stayed his hand from flipping the channel again.

            It was the picture of Walter that had remained frozen onscreen.  Something in the parting of the silvery blonde hair, the curve of the jawline, the shape of the nose, or the cold blue steel of the eyes.  He couldn’t place it, but Scott knew he recognized the face.  Yet the name made it impossible to connect to any specific memory.

            Unblinking, he leaned forward on the cushion, his mouth hanging open slightly.

            “Taking a little break, honey?” came the voice of Judy that somehow managed to boom in his eardrums and still sing like a whisper.  As she spoke, her fingers stroked gently down her son’s back to get his attention while she leaned over the couch back.

            Scott jumped at her touch, incredibly shaken by the sudden volume and nearness of his mother.

            Even though he was at his maximum height, he was generally fairly adept at sensing his oncoming family members due to the reverberations in the carpet from their feet and the small breeze created by their walking pace.  Admittedly, it was a skill that he knew had saved him on more than one occasion from additional work because he had enough warning to duck under a bed or behind a dresser.  How in the hell had she managed to get right behind him without so much as a creak of the floor?

            “Y-Yes!” he peeped nervously, clutching a hand to his heart.  Judy’s fingers ran a second time down his back, this time more slowly to soothe him after such a start.

            “Didn’t mean to scare you,” Judy chuckled warmly.  “You just looked so absorbed.”

            “I got everything done.  I promise.  It all looks good.  The house,” he gasped defensively.

            “Mm-hmm.  I’m sure it’s fine,” Judy said, glancing quickly around the living room and nodding at the sight of the dusted tabletops.  With a wink, she added: “We’ll take a tour around later just to make sure, though.”

            “Right.  Sure,” Scott confirmed.  “Is… is something wrong?”

            “Wrong?  No, not at all.  Got all my calls taken care of for now.  Everything’s going well,” Judy said, straightening back to a full standing position and placing her hands on her hips as she squinted intently at the TV screen.

            There was a twitch in her eyelid that Scott only noticed because he was standing just below her, but it was undeniable.

            “Mom?” Scott chanced after almost a full minute of silence from the pair of them while the TV rambled on with the brief recap on Walter Brandon’s crimes from the day before.

            “Everything’s going really well,” Judy repeated, finally pulling her eyes away from the TV as she leaned back over the couch and brushed Scott’s fist out of the way with her pointer finger to click the power button again, blackening the image of the man’s face.

            “Oh.  Um, good,” Scott coughed quietly, more confused even than he’d been when trying to decipher Walter’s identity on the screen.

            “So,” sighed Judy with relief, returning her full focus onto her son as he crouched nervously on the cushion below her.  Her fingertips found their way back to the top of his head and began playfully twirling at his hair.  “I’ve got a new job for you, honey.”

            “Okay,” Scott said with a shrug, already resigned to this from the time she’d returned to the room.  “Should I go grab a rag or something?”

            “Not… exactly,” the Stevens matriarch answered with a sly smirk as she splayed an index finger thoughtfully against her cheek.  The warm hand that had been petting the top of Scott’s head slid gently down to his torso and wrapped itself around his chest, which the young man obliged for the most comfortable ride possible by raising his arms as his mother lifted him off the cushion.  Her fingertips tapped amiably at his shoulder blades.  “First things first, though.  We’re going to need to get you into some different clothes.”

“Different… clothes?” the twelve-inch Scott mumbled hesitantly from Judy’s lovingly cradled arms as she marched smoothly through the hallway.

            “That’s right.  I don’t want you getting these ones all dirtied up for what you’re doing next,” his mother responded with a friendly smile.  She pursed her lips and flinched in the silence that followed, though Scott couldn’t tell why.

            When they arrived in her bedroom, Scott found himself deposited gently onto the neatly folded bedspread of the king mattress that stretched before him like an oversized flower-motif moon bounce.  Judy continued to loom above him, though she leaned her knee against the edge of the bed for balance.

            “So…” Scott began again, not sure whether or not he wanted the answer to the question of what his mother was so concerned about dirtying his clothes.

            “I was going to give you another bath before we did this, but I know you gave yourself one this morning, and, well… this is starting to sting too much, so I’d rather just go ahead.  Did you clean yourself well?” Judy asked, jamming an index finger between her lips and poking at a spot somewhere along her inner cheek.  She flinched again at the contact and withdrew her finger.

            “I… yeah, yeah I did,” Scott reassured truthfully.  He always made a point to wash himself a thorough three times whenever he was given the chance to bathe on his own, with the hope that it would eventually convince his mother he didn’t need the help.  Of course, it had yet to make much difference.

            “You smelled fine to me.  I think we’re okay to go ahead,” Judy said with a nod.

            “Okay to go ahead for what?” Scott pleaded, growing more nervous by the second.

            “You’ll see.  Don’t be nervous, honey.  Now, I am going to need you to take your clothes off so you can fit into this,” she soothed in a honeyed voice as she lifted a folded piece of what looked like thin rubber off the top of her dresser.  Undoing the folds with a few tugs from her fingers, Judy revealed what looked like a black padded wetsuit, just the right size for someone of Scott’s stature.

            “I… um, wait, I just…” Scott uttered with a befuddled frown at the sight of the scuba attire.

            “Scott?”

            “Mom, it’s just…”

            “C’mon.  Clothes off now,” Judy instructed, still with the same uncharacteristic kindness in her words she’d so recently adopted, but with the familiar imperiousness returning.

            Realizing this was in no way up for even the most meager of debates, Scott closed his eyes and whipped his shirt, pants, and underwear off and stepped out of them atop his mother’s bedspread before he even had a chance to feel embarrassed.  Still with his eyes closed, he held his arm out and accepted the wetsuit as Judy draped it over his hand.  Even without looking up, he could tell Judy hadn't made any attempt to avert her gaze from his exposed form.

            It was something of an awkward struggle getting into it, but Scott managed it as quickly as possible to minimize his time spent exposed.  When he’d finished garbing himself in the black scuba attire, he sealed the back and patted down a couple of times to smooth out the wrinkles before finally opening his eyes to find his mother now crouching over the bed, her forearms resting about a foot away from where he stood.

            There was an eerie quietude as Judy stoically propped her chin on her arms and observed her son in his rubber outfit before she opened her lips and exhaled dramatically.  She spoke in a lowered and relaxed tone as though conversing with a trauma victim.  Ironically, she wasn’t far off from doing just that.

            “W-What’s happening?” Scott mustered.

            “Honey, the other day… with the syrup on your arm, when I… helped clean you off?”

            “Yeah?”

            “I… well, I didn’t just do it to be funny.  I did it because I just wanted you to know what it felt like, so you’d have the chance to get used to it.”

            “Get used to what?”

            “My mouth,” Judy simpered casually, instinctively running the tip of her tongue over her lower lip.

            “Your m-m… W-Why?”

            “So you wouldn’t be scared when I put… all of you.  Inside,” Judy declared tenderly, widening her jaws to give her foot-tall son a better view, which, from the conversation, made the confused and terrified young man unable to keep from gazing into it.

            Dark, glistening, and spongy, the interior of Judy’s mouth positively radiated muggy heat and the secondhand scent of tangerines from breakfast, though this was a small comfort to Scott in the face of so much darkness and visibly trickling moisture.

            “In… side…” Scott gaped hollowly, unable to tear his vision from the horrifying inner sanctum of his mother’s jowls.  Even at his maximum size, he knew he could fit his entire head between them without Judy even needing to fully open.

            This couldn’t be what it was starting to look like.  It couldn’t be.  It had to be a disgusting practical joke.  A new scare tactic on his mother’s part.  She had plenty of those up her sleeves.  Every other week she came up with something new to toss him an emotional curveball.  Why couldn’t this be one too?

            At his diminished size, his mother had only ever allowed herself and her younger children to handle Scott in their hands and feet with reasonable caution.

            But this?  This was something wild and new and acidic in the pit of his stomach.

            Her mouth.

            His mother’s mouth.

            She was going to put him.  Into.  Her mouth.

            “That’s right, honey,” Judy reassured warmly with a steady nod of her head, at long last closing her lips again.  “Don’t be nervous.  It’s nothing to be worried about.

            “W-W-Why… why would y-you…”

            “My back molar,” she answered simply with a grimace.  “It’s got a huge ache, the dentist is booked up until next week, and what with the party coming up soon… well…”

            “So what am I supposed to do, though?” Scott wheezed breathlessly, steadily making his way into a muted panic mode.

            “This medicated balm I picked up is supposed to help.  I only need a bit, but it has to be worked into the tooth to do any good.  It has to be done for several minutes continuously, and my brush and my fingers just sting too much.  It’s very sensitive right now,” Judy explained as logically as possible, brushing a hand through her blonde tresses.  “So I need a gentler touch to make it work.”

            “H-H-How would I f-fit?” Scott gasped desperately, knowing full well how foolish his question was as each word fumbled its way between his lips.

            “You’re so silly sometimes, honey,” Judy snickered adoringly.  “I’ll have to make you smaller first.”

            “How… m-much sm-”

            “An inch, of course.”

            Scott’s stomach began churning so hard at this point he was almost sure it was going to back up.  It was making him work up a sweat just gazing into his mother’s mouth at his maximum height.  But he wasn’t going in like that.

            He was going in at a twelfth of that.

            He was going in at the size of a popcorn cluster.

            His mother was going to make him crawl atop the slimy red carpet of her tongue and perform a delicate massaging procedure on the tooth in the furthest reach of her warm cavern as he could go without tripping down her gullet.

            “Mom,” Scott swallowed, fighting back the quaver of oncoming dry sobbing in his throat.  “I’m… I’m not r-ready for this.  I’m not.”

            “Don’t be like that, honey.  I have all the faith in the world in you,” Judy insisted as she rose back from her haunches to her full height, whereupon she made her way back to the dresser to retrieve a small bottle half the size of a toothpaste tube, which she pocketed.

            “It’s just… I d-don’t know if I’m, like… qualified to-”

            “You’re scared,” Judy commented bluntly as she returned to the bedside and leaned back over it in the same manner, this time close enough that her face was a mere six inches away from the seated form of her dumbfounded oldest offspring.  “And that’s okay.  I get it.  I know you don’t want to do it.”

            “P-Please, Mom,” Scott whimpered, feeling at his lowliest but no longer caring due to the impending episode he could see threatening to literally swallow up any sense of security he’d have for the remainder of the month at least.  “Please don’t…”

            “Scott,” Judy repeated calmly, extending a hand gently toward her son and lightly gripping his rubber-clad hand between her fingertips as though to comfort him.  “Just think about it for a second.  It’s really not a big deal.  I got you this suit so you wouldn’t even feel it on most of your body.  Except your, well…”

            “My head,” he gulped, now unable to keep back a few tremors running through his limbs at Judy’s contact.

            “Don’t shake, honey.  It’s okay.  Mommy’s got you.  I’m going to help you get used to it first.  Now just hold still for me,” the woman instructed sweetly with the friendliest smile she could possibly muster, a twinkle in her eye as she leaned her head in even closer toward her cowering son.

            “Get used to…” Scott peeped, but felt his words quickly shriveling in his throat as he watched his mother’s lips unfurling again and the shining visage of her muscular tongue emerging in a fresh coat of saliva, proceeding toward his face without any hesitation.

            Judy wasn’t exaggerating about her intent to acclimate Scott to the sensation of being her in mouth.  At first, she only licked along his face with the tip of her tongue, giving him a chance to get used to the rubbery texture of the muscle and the ridged surface of taste buds.  Scott tried to lean back instinctively to avoid the moist onslaught, but quickly found his mother’s right hand behind his back cupping him closer toward her mouth.

            She quickly moved on to more aggressive slurps that introduced him to the sides of her tongue as they massaged under his chin, along his ears, and the top of his head.  Soon she was fully lapping his face with deeper caresses of her sopping pink organ, again and again until the frothy gloss glistened between every hair and on each cheek.

            A low groan of satisfaction gurgled from the back of the forty-four-year-old’s throat as she molded her son’s face into the deepest valley of her tongue without activating her gag reflex before finally retracting it back between her lips in a mist of spittle.

            “Feeling all right, honey?” Judy questioned with quiet concern as she wiped the back of her wrist across her damp lips.

            “M-M-M…” Scott chimed under his breath, mouth agape in shock, as he fought to exhale the stray drops of his mother’s gooey saliva that had made their way into his nostrils.

            “I know you can handle it.  It’s only for a few minutes, and now that you know what it’ll feel like… I think you’ll be fine.  In fact, it’ll be easier than that, because all you have to do is climb back to my molar,” Judy said glowingly as she rose from the bed, leaving Scott to flop backwards onto his back in a prone state of defeated terror while her saliva congealed on his face.

            “Uh…”

            “No more excuses, honey,” the woman snapped sweetly as she returned to the bedspread with the PMRD already partially out of its case.  She had it booting up and set to the correct settings in under ten seconds, and an instant afterward was crouching above her sprawled son on the bed like a cat over wounded prey, aiming the barrel of the device at him and his suit to shrink them in tandem before squeezing the trigger.  “Just be the brave little boy I know you are.”

            Perhaps experiencing what was the least brave moment of his entire life, Scott trembled from his feet to his neck as he blinked in the familiar green flash and rode out the ripple of telltale ice cold under his skin.

            He couldn’t even summon the courage to open his mouth in dread as he reduced into the landscape of the bed and watched as his mother’s now-colossal outstretched fingers delicately advanced on his inch-tall body to pluck him up like a dropped crumb, swallowing him up in their mere shadow.

Scott had to admit to himself, at least, that his mother was creative.  He had thought that after eight years of on-and-off shrinking and being held in the palm of someone’s hand at the height of half a thumb that he was slowly but surely building up an immunity to fear.

            By the time he was eighteen, his greatest concern at suddenly being zapped down to a size more suitable to snuggle between someone’s toes was the sheer embarrassment of it rather than the physical risk.  He wasn’t sure if it was just apathy, or at least the assumption that the women in his life had had enough practice at it to reliably not splatter him while standing on top of him, but regardless, after so long, he’d managed to build up a shell.

            As his mother now pinched him gingerly between her thumb and index finger like a Sour Patch Kid mere inches from her gently parted lips, preparing to insert him into the blackness and heat atop her slithering tongue, he realized that shell of false confidence was about to be cracked asunder in a single instant.

            In this moment, as he gazed as far as he could into the moist darkness he was about to find himself immersed in between Judy’s cheeks, he realized he wasn’t the same headstrong twenty-one-year-old with a penchant for play over work and a tendency to ignore authority.  He was that same thirteen-year-old who first watched himself reducing into a pile of clothes and witnessing his mother becoming a statuesque goddess before him by default.

            He was truly afraid.  And it hurt.

            Scott had had a number of bad dreams about what could happen when he shrunk, and they had exponentially increased during his house arrest, but none unsettled him quite like the recurring one where he found himself being placed into his mother’s mouth, either on accident or, perhaps even worse, with Judy’s full intention and a smile on her face.

            It was sobering like nothing else, believing that the woman that had given birth to him and raised him was so willing to stick him atop her writhing tongue and swallow him for sustenance, but they had always just been nightmares that left him with nothing more than a cold sweat and heaving breathing when he awoke.

            But not this time.

            “It’s only for a few minutes, honey.  Then I’ll get you right out and we’ll wash you off,” Judy reassured calmly, careful not to speak too quickly as she exhaled warm gusts onto her tiny son perched between the soft pads of her fingers.  All Scott could do was shiver and try not to look down at the hopelessly winding drop below him to avoid nausea.  “And… I know you don’t like it when I say things like this, but, well… you’re just as cute as a button right now.”

            “Uh-huh,” he mumbled under his breath, too low even for Judy to hear.

            “Hold out your hands now,” she said at length, biting the side of her lip gently in thought.  This sight alone was enough to make Scott wince for reasons he couldn’t understand.

            Blinking away a few anxious tears that had pooled in his eyes, he looked down just enough to see Judy’s free hand rising into view below him, a glob of the cream dabbed onto her extended pointer finger, which stopped just short of Scott’s face.  Hesitant to take some for fear of speeding up this process more than necessary, he scooped some of the translucent goop into his hands.

            “Good boy,” Judy commented.

            It was thick between his fingers, like partially hardened Jell-O, and it was easy enough to hang onto.  The smell was unpleasant and reminded Scott of nontoxic glue, but he suspected this scent would soon be radically overpowered by a hot haze of leftover citrus fruit and cool mint toothpaste once he was inside his final destination.

            “Now,” the titanic woman sighed.  “The molar on the right side of my mouth, the furthest one in the back.  You should be able to find it pretty easily, and I’ll keep my mouth open as long as I can.”

            “As long… as you can?” squeaked Scott, rattled into coherence briefly.

            “Well, yes.  It’s probably going to get sore after a couple minutes of just holding open,” Judy explained logically, clearly not at all bothered by her son’s concerns.  “Don’t worry, I’ll wait until you’ve found the tooth and gotten the hang of it before I close my lips.  You’ll be able to do it with your eyes shut anyway.”

            “That’s the plan,” gulped Scott.

            “Don’t be nervous.  Besides, once you’ve done this the first time, it’ll get so much easier afterward.  Now just hold still for me, honey.”

            Once?  Afterward?  First time?

            Scott resolved to quickly put this startling utterance of Judy’s out of his mind in the interest of not giving into the nausea from the combination of everything happening around him and instead took a deep, barely-calming inhalation.

            Judy’s pink lips parted the rest of the way until the cavernous sanctum of her jaws was fully illuminated.  Her teeth, freshly polished and perfectly straight, glistened in the light of the bedroom.  The tongue wriggled at its full revelation, the taste buds visibly undulating with anticipation of their newest acquisition, though the whole monster quickly settled down into the base of Judy’s mouth to receive.  Her uvula, bulbous and gleaming with saliva, danced in the rush of hot air.  A low rumble emanated from the back of Judy’s throat and eventually climbed to a higher pitch.

            “Ahhhh…” the woman droned as though at a doctor’s appointment as her fingers finally drew closer to her lips, taking their time in order to get Scott as used to the idea as possible, though both knew no such thing would really make a difference.

            Despite all his preparation of having his arm sucked and his face licked by the heinously slimy beast of a muscle, Scott still couldn’t help but announce his arrival onto the dripping expanse of his mother’s tongue with a cringe and a yelp.  Her fingers parted away from his sides and exited her jaws as soon as he had taken a balanced position in the center of his mother’s tongue where he wouldn’t slip off to the side and onto her teeth.

            He could hear the briefest musical note of a giggle echoing up from Judy’s throat, but it was quickly silenced again just before he could get the full effect of its vibration down the length of her tongue.

            For a few seconds he just settled in, willing himself to crawl to his feet, but the sight before him was just a little too humbling to make wobbling up to his feet a very inviting prospect.  He was staring down the length of his mother’s ribbed hovel of a mouth, and with her jaws widened all the way, he wasn’t even sure he touch the roof of it if he stood up on his tiptoes.  The real paralyzer was the well-lit visage of Judy’s throat, gated by her dangling uvula.  A single tip of her red organ at the wrong angle would send the young man careening along his mother’s tongue like an organic slip n’ slide and down her slender gullet.

            A gentle yet firmly motivational prod from Judy’s index finger suddenly against his back that slid him forward a fraction of an inch along the gummy surface with a sticky smack of rubber-on-spit forced Scott to focus again.

            “Okay… okay…” Scott mouthed to himself as he clenched his eyes shut and tried to stand up.  It was a shaky process, though easier than he’d thought it would be because of the traction provided by his mother’s taste buds, and because Judy actually seemed to be making an effort to keep her tongue perfectly still.

            Because there was a slight decline in her tongue as she clasped it to the floor of her mouth, though, Scott had a small inch-long ascent to make.  Balancing the globule of balm in one hand, he managed to work his way up on his forearms and shins using his mother’s taste buds as grip support.  The journey was shorter than he’d expected from the view outside, though that didn’t make it any easier, and the longer Scott muddled in the gooey slog of Judy’s mouth, the more he felt claustrophobia settling in.

            He wondered how it could be possible to fear something for its massive and omnipotent presentation from the outside, yet feel he was being closed in on from the moist walls of Judy’s cheeks once inside.  Whatever the explanation, it was hitting his heart rate fast and hard, and he gasped to keep himself in check as he lithely slipped off the side of Judy’s pink animal and wriggled his way into the expanding crevice between her jawline and tongue, which she helpfully parted further to make room once he’d arrived.  The molar had no immediately apparent markings that would indicate pain was being induced, though Scott wasn’t going to be one to question his mother’s judgments, particularly when she had him neatly tucked away an inch or so away from a hole that would make him into an instant snack.

            “No big deal.  No big deal,” Scott whispered to himself, repeating his mother’s somewhat empty words from earlier, as he rubbed the balm between his hands to work it into a smoother texture.  So far, his tactile fears had just proved mental, as his face had yet to make contact with anything that made him quite as wet as when Judy had straight-up licked him across the face for a full minute.  Of course, the entire hot, frothy atmosphere itself was far scarier to the young man than any amount of his mother’s slobber he might find coating his skin.  “Just a couple minutes.  Just a tooth.  Just a tongue.  Just a mouth.  Mommy’s… mouth.”

            Scott set his medicated hands as lightly as he could onto the problem molar and began to massage back and forth with enough delicacy that he could’ve been laying his hands on a slumbering rhino and not shaken it.  In fact, he wondered if this was going to be doing anything at all to help the issue, but ultimately he decided that anything he could do to prevent Judy from jerking her head around in pain while he sat so close to her throat would be a well-advised move.

            A soft moan of discomfort gurgled from the back of Judy’s throat.  The young man stopped moving his hands for a moment to let the moment pass, terrified a twitch was about to rattle through Judy’s teeth that would send him flying across the slimy alley, but nothing happened.  Taking a deep breath, he got back into it, applying the goop as far as he could reach around the whole pulverizing mound, finding it unsettlingly easy to get his fingers even in between the crevice next to a smaller tooth.

            “Mom’s.  Mom’s mouth,” Scott added to himself with a start under his breath after a long delay, though somehow, this correction didn’t do much to help make matters less stressful.

            Nor, indeed, did the sight of the light fading rapidly that had previously washed over the soggy pink walls of his mother’s enormous maw as Judy closed her lips and sealed her son inside the dank and citrusy prison.

            Scott sat dumbfounded on his mother’s bedside table, still at an inch tall, having been removed from Judy’s mouth on his toothache-soothing duties.  Considering how much anticipatory preparation she’d put him through in conversation and practical training, the conclusion of the act was oddly nonchalant.

            After he’d spent about four minutes in the muggy pitch-black of his mother’s mouth, attending to her supposedly agonized molar with the medicinal balm, totally ignoring a few stray droplets of saliva that had dribbled from the roof of her mouth, he’d groggily become aware of light flooding back in over her teeth.  He noticed his mother’s fingers snatching him expertly from the slimy floor of her mouth and taking him back into the refreshing cool of her bedroom, where she deposited him back into her palm and walked him to the bathroom.

            Her fingernails had expertly worked to pry the suit from his one-inch form, leaving him somewhat cold and curled up in the center of her palm once she’d stripped him naked.  He’d hardly made a move as Judy set about dabbing some warm water and soap into his body to clean him off, then simply laid limp as he was placed next to a clean t-shirt and pants on the table.

            Despite her knowledge of her son’s incoherence at this moment, Judy still calmly explained that the process seemed even easier than she’d been expecting and that she was proud of him for complying with her requests after so little resistance.  He’d nodded, not wanting to soil the apparent success of the moment for himself, though he still couldn’t bring himself to look up at Judy, because he was almost certain he’d flinch at the sight of her lips moving, even if they weren’t opening wide to receive him again.

            “Like I said, honey, no big deal.  You’re a big boy now; I know you can handle a little nervousness.  And the best part?  We only have to do this every 24 hours for the next week.  I got the good stuff,” she informed him.  “It lasts longer.”

            “Uh-huh,” Scott mumbled so quietly it scarcely came out.

            “You look a little tired out.  I’ll give you a little while to yourself before I come back, okay?  I’ve got a couple errands to run, so I’ll be back later to put you back to twelve, and then I’ve got a couple things you can do in the garden for me.  You know, give you a chance to pick up some sun.  Deal?”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “You did a great job, honey.  Go ahead and change into your clothes, and I’ll be back for you,” Judy said.  Lightly kissing the tip of her index finger, the woman sensitively touched the pad of her digit to her son’s face such that the force of it didn’t even push the inch-tall young man back.  He still cringed at the touch, feeling the familiar gloss of moisture on her skin gracing his cheeks once again, particularly as her fingertip then traced down his neck and to his chest, spreading the gooey contact further.  “Just sit tight.”

            And sit tight he did, with his legs hugged to his chest and his arms wrapped around his shins, his chin resting on his knees.  Finally, Scott dove back into the comfort of his normal clothing as quickly as he could.  He knew he’d regret later having redressed himself when he had the chance, as he doubted Judy would take the extra three seconds required to grow his clothes along with him if they weren’t already adorning his body.  The warm feeling of the protective material hugging his skin was now melded into his mind in conjunction with the sensation of being immersed in the rapidly swelling heat and drenching drool, and he was not eager to have to clamber back inside the tight little suit.

            Scott folded his arms and leaned back against a small flower vase Judy kept next to her bed.  It figured that his mother would force him to spend his free time with nothing to do but sit in a confined area, just by virtue of purposefully leaving him at one inch right now rather than growing him back like she’d said she would later, but he at least appreciated the reprieve after what she’d just had him do.

            An inordinate amount of time passed at a snail’s pace in utter silence for Scott.  Eventually he heard the garage door opening and closing downstairs, indicating his siblings had returned home from school.  He shrugged, at least grateful that he wouldn’t be in Maggie’s immediate sights upon her return home, though he had a feeling he might ultimately be kept from his cleaning duties if Judy took much longer to return.  The sound of feet thumping up the stairs made this suspicion even easier to buy.

            It was then that the phone a few inches to the right of the vase began to ring.  Scott ignored it at first, knowing Judy would have quicker access to it.  He frowned and covered his ears to shield from the harsh tones, idly irritated that his mother had insisted on such an archaic practice of a landline, most of which had been all but abolished as a practice.  As usual, Judy’s preference for doing certain things the old fashioned way was a severe hindrance to Scott’s general comfort level.

            “Can someone get that?” echoed Judy’s voice through the house from somewhere downstairs.

            Out of annoyance at the ringing, Scott pulled himself to his feet and chanced a glance at the caller ID by stepping back closer to the edge of the bedside table and standing on his tiptoes.

            ELLA-STENSON

            Fuck.

            Knowing full-well how useless it was at his current height, Scott scrambled to pull himself atop the low-sitting base of the phone, nearly slipping over the oblong surface, and pressed his back into the receiver, trying with all his might to budge it from where it sat to receive the call.  He grunted, putting all his strength into it, but at a size smaller than a house key, it was a complete joke for him to attempt.

            It was all foolish and a hopeless waste.  Even if he had the height to roll the phone off the pad, Judy would take serious issue with his answering it, particularly given who was calling.  Judy liked Ella as much as Maggie did, but with her rules in place, there was no telling what kind of reaction she’d had, and after the “nicer” streak she’d been on recently, who knew what it would take to derail her?

            Yet he still had to try, for the sake of his emotional stability, or whatever remained of it.

            “I’LL GET IT!” sang out the voice of his sister from her bedroom a couple doors down.

            Double fuck.

            Sliding off the phone pad as quickly as he could, Scott noted with horror that the phone by Judy’s bed was the only landline on the second floor, meaning it had suddenly become a target.  Looking around frantically, and knowing he wouldn’t be able to get far to stay out of his sister’s line of sight, in a panic, Scott’s eyes caught on the wetsuit.  He stooped and quickly bundled it up into a ball, knowing that hiding it from Maggie’s curious eyes was his top priority at this moment, and dashed behind the flower vase just as the door to the bedroom swung open with a flamboyant slam and the blonde sixteen-year-old skipped into the room in one of her new green sundresses.

            Stowing the balled up inch-tall wetsuit at what he believed to be the most secure angle, given where his sister was about to be standing, Scott took a few steps back and held his breath just in time to make eye contact with the looming form of his ponytailed skyscraper sister far above, a chill running over his skin as the familiar grin spread over her lips.

            No matter how many times he was exposed to Maggie at his minimum height, it never failed to give him a positively nuclear burn in the pit of his stomach.  Surprisingly, when control was handed over, the girl usually made him around two to four inches so she could more safely wear him in a shoe without the risk of injury, though whenever she brought him all the way down, things didn’t tend to improve much anyway.

            It was useless to even move.  A flick of her pinky could knock him off the table.  Not that she would, given the swift end it would bring to their playtimes, but the mere fact that she didn’t even have to do anything to Scott at this height to give any semblance of crushed hope to him actually served to make it less entertaining for the girl.

            Her locked eyes refusing to break away from her brother as she scooped up the phone so easily in her right hand and brought it to her ear, Maggie’s face lit up again at the sound of Ella’s voice.

            “Hey again, Ella!  How’s it going?” she chimed happily.  “Same old, same old.  You?”

            Scott folded his hands in front of his stomach and kept his legs pressed together, too crestfallen to attempt any further motion.

            “That’s good… what?  Where’s Scott?” Maggie repeated, fighting back a giggle.  Leading with a thumb comparatively the size of a car, the teen quickly brought her hand down toward her miniscule sibling in a quick rush of air that nearly toppled Scott.  She nudged the young man in the chest with her finger, threatening to bowl him over, though he managed to stand his ground by quickly readjusting his stance.

            Maggie shook her head almost piteously, reminded with visible glee of how easy it was to push around the inch-high Scott, and pouted her lips.  Extending her pointer finger, then, she patted her brother on the top of his head with enough gentleness that she didn’t knock him down, but it was more than needed to knock him off balance again.  She tenderly stroked along his back a single time as he desperately tried to right himself, this time for more unsettling measure, before finally retracting her hand and placing it authoritatively on her hip with a clap.

            “He’s actually off… taking a break right now from work,” Maggie commented with ironic truthfulness.  “Talk to him?  Yeah, you could, probably.  No, I don’t think Mom cares.  Want me to go ask him?”

            Scott’s heart caught in his chest.

            Was she actually about to let him do it?

            “Let me just check,” Maggie said, removing the phone from her ear, and then her hand began lowering toward the desk.  Unbridled joy in his heart, Scott couldn’t help but tremble with excitement as he watched the descending mass of the train-sized phone descending toward him, gripped in his sister’s firm fingers.

            Her gargantuan hand stopped lowering when it was roughly a foot above the table, her arm parallel with the surface.

            “Maggie, please,” Scott gasped, his heart sinking and butterflies re-entering his stomach as he gazed helplessly up at the overhanging form of the phone, far too distant to speak clearly into it at his size.

            The girl just shrugged, nodding her head in the direction of the phone, indicating he was free to speak.

            “ELLA!” bellowed Scott.  “ELLA!”

            This repeated several times, with no response coming from the top of the phone, as the sound was clearly not carrying, or at least not coherently enough to be interpreted as a word by Scott’s girlfriend on the other end of the line.  Finally, with a shrug and a falsely defeated smirk, Maggie brought the phone back to her ear.

            “Hey, Ella.  Yeah, sorry about that.  I asked him if he had anything to say, but I guess he’d not feeling so up to it right now.”

            Scott’s fists clenched, burning white hot, as he seethed with newfound rage at his sister’s cruelty.  Despite his paltry understanding of her misguided and deep-seated grudges against him, this was going too far.  This was making it personal.

            She could put him on display on social media, let her friends toy with him, and make him black out while wearing him in a sock.  But right now, she was actively working to destroy one of the final relationships he truly cherished in his life, even for how dangerously shaky things were with Ella after his crime.

            He tightened his teeth together, forcing himself to keep his mouth shut and refrain from hurling every obscenity in his toolbox up at the towering four-hundred-foot-tall vision of his cheerful, athletic sibling casually screwing with his tiny life despite her monolithic stature.  No matter what, he couldn’t risk whatever invisible progress he might’ve potentially made in getting her off his case, and especially considering her more recent social developments, that was more vital than ever.

            If he could only get a chance at that phone, a real one, he knew he’d be willing to put up with just about anything the twisted teen could concoct, silently and without complaint, no matter how much it burned him up inside.

            “Yeah, I know.  Bummer,” Maggie commented after a pause of listening to Ella’s response.  “Maybe he’s just not in the mood to talk right now.  He might be too tired from work.”

            Scott pressed his palms together and actually found himself praying a little, though he wasn’t entirely sure who the recipient was.

            Ella knew full well the kinds of things he was put through under this roof at the hands of his mother and sister.  She knew more than anyone, in fact.  Though she seemed oddly capable of maintaining friendly relationships with Maggie and Judy whenever they all met, she had expressed her sympathies in times past to Scott whenever they’d go out together, partially just so he could escape the strain of his home life.  Many a time, he’d leaned his head against her shoulder with none too many degrees of shame, and croaked his way through some horrific account of what had taken place in someone’s titanic hands or articles of clothing.

            Ella would often just stroke his hair through all this, telling him it would be okay once they were in college and he could finally get away from it all.  There’d always been a certain awkward sore point between them since the first time Ella had witnessed Scott’s shrinking and placement into his mother’s shoe, and even tried it out herself at Judy’s behest.  She’d of course apologized numerous times in the time afterward, though not with the kind of deep groveling sorrow Scott had hoped, given the level of humiliation he had sunk to during the whole affair, and he knew that part of her had enjoyed it, even though she denied such a notion and insisted it was just to keep his mother as happy as possible during the shrunken disciplinary session.

            If only she could know for sure that he wasn’t allowed to use the phone, and that it was being dangled above him like a carrot just far enough out of reach.

            “Tell him what?” Maggie continued on the phone, shifting her weight to the other leg.  “You need to talk.  Tell him that.  Okay.  Okay, I will… what?  Tell him it needs to happen… soon.  Right, okay.  Bye, Ella!”

            Triple fuck.

            Despite what were hopefully suspicions on Ella’s part that Maggie was bending the truth in order to scam Scott out of a little simple happiness, he had swelling doubts that this knowledge would be enough for her.  The longer she was made to think about it all, and what he’d done, the less likely it would be that she’d pursue contact with him through the mad jumble of it all, because with a sickening twist, he knew that she no longer could fully disapprove of the things that happened to him here.  After all, who could put up with all this like she had for all this time?  It would drain just about anyone to put up with it for so long.  Even knowing the kind of life he was forced to lead under this roof, Ella might just fold under the emotional pressure and decide the pursuit wasn’t worth it anymore.

            Scott’s eyes welled with tears.  Deep down, he couldn’t blame her.

            Maggie’s grip descended fully back down to the base, hanging up the phone, as her fingers drummed lightly against the handset.

“So…” Maggie drawled, crossing her arms as she savored the size of her trinket-sized brother at his absolute minimum height, standing atop the bedside table just about level with her waist.  “What are we going to do about this?”

            Scott opened his mouth, wanting to speak and offer whatever the requisite vocal debasing was needed to get his looming titan of a sister to call Ella back and give him the chance to talk to her.

            “Cat got your tongue again, little boy?” Maggie cooed with a smirk.  “Really, really little, I mean.”

            What could he say?  Was there even anything?  Could he throw himself down at his knees and offer himself up as a personal dummy for his sister?  Was there anything he could willingly do that would make it easier than if she just made him?  He was positively nauseated by the thought of it, but with what sounded like his romantic prospects roosting treacherously on the line, it was something he knew he had to do.  For Ella’s sake, and for his own, mostly.

            “Yeah,” he coughed.

            “Why’s that?” Maggie giggled.  “You know, if you’d stood on your tiptoes, I bet you could’ve reached the phone.  You just didn’t try hard enough.”

            “I know,” Scott agreed flatly, falling as smoothly as he could onto autopilot in order to increase his depressingly slim odds of success.

            Maggie frowned, obviously somewhat irritated at his refusal to play along, then leaned down closer until she could rest both hands on the edge of the table for support.  Her contact with it rattled the entire surface, forcing Scott to cower momentarily to keep from falling over, as the heels of her enormous hands smacked down concussively.

            Her arms.  Her hands.  Her fingers.  Just the sight of them made him queasy, now that they were this much closer to him at this size.  They looked big enough to scoop up a dump truck and compress it between her peachy palms like an empty soda can.

            He knew what something that destructive looked like, because Maggie got a certain kick out of smashing trash between her fingers for added show before tossing it into the bin well within Scott’s view.  Like a preview of some kind.

            Imagination was usually not something he needed much of.

            “Well, good,” Maggie offered at length, her brow slightly furrowed.  Her hands slid a few inches further across the table, causing Scott to take a precautionary and fruitless step back away.  “So tell me, itty bitty.  What did you do with yourself today?”

            “Huh?”

            “You heard me.  I know you did, because I bet I could make you go deaf if I talked much louder, COULDN’T I?”

            Scott shivered, indeed feeling the tiniest ringing in his ears at the boom of his little sister’s words, but refused to let it show.  He swallowed hard.

            “Cleaned the house.”

            “Uh-huh.  And that’s it?” Maggie pressed, raising an eyebrow.

            “Yes.”
            “Really.  Absolutely everything.  You didn’t have fun at all?”

            Where was she going with this?  He imagined the very idea of him enjoying any given part of his house arrest would give his sister a hernia.  What did she want?

            “No.  Just lots of work.”

            “None?  No TV, or sports, or… going swimming?”

            Another silly question.  The family’s backyard swimming pool was a pretty undesirable place for the young man, as it was literally impossible for him to get out of it on his own, particularly if he was any smaller than a foot.  And as he’d already had a couple of experiences being used as a pool toy for his sister and her friends during these early pre-summer days, the both of them knew he’d never willingly set foot out there on his own.

            “No swimming.”

            “Oh really?” Maggie chuckled almost accusingly, lifting her left hand up slowly, which by this point had disappeared from view behind the flower vase.  “Then what, exactly, where you doing in this?”

            Her hand suddenly emerged, hanging far overhead, but close enough to give him a good look.  Pinched between her index and thumb was the tiny wetsuit, looking comically pathetic at less than an inch long in her powerful grip.

            Scott felt the familiar running of ice in his bloodstream, perhaps faster than he’d ever experienced in his sister’s presence.

            “I… I w-was in the p-pipes.  Under the s-s-sink…” Scott gasped, desperate to hide his panic and failing almost immediately as a cold sweat ran down his back.  “Mom d-d-didn’t w-want me to get… s-stuck.”

            “Is that so?” Maggie said with interest, nodding her head.  “That was a good idea.”

            “Yep!”

            “That way you can move around easier in the water, you don’t get dirty, and best of all, you’re safer from falling down anywhere the water might go.”

            “Uh… uh-huh.”

            “But you know, I was also just curious,” the girl continued.  “What else it could be used for?  I’ll bet there’s a lot we could do.”

            “W-What?  ”

            “Oh, sure.  I mean, c’mon.  We’ve got a handy little inch-tall boy at our disposal, a cute little scuba suit for him, and a lot of narrow spaces around the house,” she observed.  “So many places you could fit.”

            Her words were suddenly dripping with that terrifying new tone, moist and curious, suggesting something else was on her mind that she didn’t dare reveal in full, and it was making Scott sicker than he thought possible, with positively nowhere to run.

            “She put you in her mouth, didn’t she?” Maggie asked suddenly, on the verge of a full-on cackle, but managed to keep her voice low and terrifying as ever.  “Mom stuck you in her mouth.”

            “N-No!  No, s-s-she… s-she…”

            “Don’t.  You.  Dare.  Lie to me,” Maggie spat, suddenly leaning much further over the table in a rush of wind, this time sending Scott clean off his feet.  The sultry bent of her words moments before had dried up and been replaced with venom.

            “Yes.”

            The word hurt Scott’s throat, but in his fear, it came out clearly.

            A slimy tongue, practically amorphous in its glistening, flexing form, emerged from between Maggie’s lips and slid back and forth three times for good measure.  She was close enough that she could’ve leaned forward an extra few inches and ravaged Scott in saliva with a single slurp.

            “I hope you’re a good swimmer, little boy.”

            Scott’s every inch was shaking well beyond his control, and he had to fight back a horrified shout in the back of his throat as Maggie’s right hand rose up, her thumb and index parted just wide enough to grasp him up for a one-way elevator ride up.

            He groaned sorely as she pinched him roughly in her haste and lifted him up without another second’s pause, rising back to her full height and brandishing her inch-tall brother in her hand just above her head so that he could look down upon his destination.

            The sixteen-year-old’s mouth opened as wide as possible, her eyes clenched shut with glee as she bounced her golden ponytail to the opposite shoulder.

            “Maggie, PLEASE!” Scott cried hoarsely as his sister’s fingers descended with him toward the blackness, his voice cracking hard as he watched a few strands of dancing saliva dangle across the softly parted lips that could barely hold back a monumental grin.  “PLEASE DON’T!”

            “I’m heading out, guys,” Judy announced as she suddenly popped her head back into the room.  “You two getting along in here?”

            “Uh-huh,” Maggie answered, her mouth hanging open in a bizarre and sheepish smile, her baby blue eyes refusing to break contact with Scott, who was now marinating in a cold sweat.

            “What are you two doing in here?” Judy questioned, taking a few steps into the room.  Scott could feel his sister’s hand lowering a few inches to uselessly conceal the preparation for such an obvious act.

            “Nothing,” Maggie insisted, rolling her eyes when their mother wasn’t looking, and playing with her brother between a couple of prodding fingers.  She cupped Scott into her palm, giving him a reprieve at least for this moment, though that didn’t stop Scott from huddling fearfully into the fleshy center of his sister’s hand and working to fight back the shivering.  Swallowing his pride without a second thought, he allowed himself to draw comfort from the warm embrace of the very skin that had so nearly deposited him into a slimy hellhole.

            “Really?  Because… it looks an awful lot like you were going to put your brother in your mouth, sweetie,” Judy declared calmly.

            Once again, Scott found himself perplexed by his mother’s out-of-character apparent defense of him, particularly when it concerned his sister disciplining him with her special type of draconian torment, something Judy usually let go without comment.  Nevertheless, he held his breath, unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially after he’d had to go into said gift horse’s mouth earlier in the day.

            Now that a new week had started, he could leave the house again.  Maybe Judy would insist on taking him with her.  Maybe he could be saved.

            “Mom… come on.  It wasn’t going to be anything bad.  I was just going to, you know, let him sit there for a second.”

            “Honey, I’m sure you didn’t mean to do anything bad to him-”

            It was Scott’s turn to roll his eyes now.

            “-but I think you’d better stick to… less risky activities with him right now.”

            “Why?  You did it,” Maggie commented as politely as she could muster.  “I know you did.”

            “That’s different.  I’m his mother,” Judy countered curtly.  “Now, I’ve got to be going, and I need you to listen to me and not put him anywhere near your mouth.  Remember when we talked about it the first time?”

            The goddamned which time?

            At this point, Scott was hopelessly losing the battle to stop the tremors in his body.

            “Yes, Mom,” groaned Maggie sadly, leaning back against the edge of the queen bed while keeping her upturned hand containing her brother roughly at stomach level.

            “I’m serious, sweetie,” Judy said in her over-sugared way.  “Scott’s got some weeds to pull for me outside.  He knows they have to get done, and now he knows that I don’t want him going in your mouth.  If I come home and find the garden’s still not looking pristine… we may have a couple of problems to deal with.”

            Scott couldn’t help but freeze in puzzlement as a cutting momentary release from his fears of being placed into his little sister’s mouth.  This confused him even more than the fact that his mother was defending him.

            This was a move Judy had never made before in all eight years of using the PMRD.

            She seemed to actually be directly linking Scott’s disciplinary fate with Maggie’s, and putting the latter in a position that she couldn’t just do whatever she wanted.  Maggie was actually being held responsible for something over her tiny brother.

            Scott had to blink a few times to ensure he was still on the same plane of reality as a few moments before.  Somehow, he was.

            “Right, Mom,” Maggie said, managing to squelch the sarcasm from her voice to sound shockingly sincere.  “Fine.  I swear I won’t.”

            “We don’t swear, sweetie, we promise.  Promise me.”

            “I promise I won’t put Scotty in my mouth.”

            “Great.  And I will want to see those weeds pulled when I get back in an hour, so if you could put him back to twelve and make sure the screen is open out back so he can get through the cat door, I’d appreciate it.”

            “Uh-huh,” Maggie uttered nonchalantly.  “Will do.”

            “Thanks so much, sweetie.  And Scott?  Make sure you pull at the root so they don’t grow back.  I’ll see you guys later,” Judy said with a final wave as she disappeared back into the hallway.

            For a couple minutes, Maggie remained frozen in place, keeping Scott sprawled in the center of her palm while she listened to the sound of footsteps down the stairs, the garage door opening and closing, and the zoom of Judy’s car back down the street.

            In the blink of an eye, Scott found his heart thrown back into overdrive.

            “All right, little boy,” Maggie said definitively, pinching her brother up between two fingers again and raising him to eye level for examination, her tone instantaneously businesslike.  “Let’s make a deal.”

“D-Deal?” Scott peeped as his little sister kept his inch-tall body pinched within spitting distance of her deep blue irises, grim determination in her gaze.

            “Yep.  I’m surprised you don’t want to make one with me, actually,” she commented with a confused frown.

            “W-What?”

            “I guess I’m gonna have to do the talking here, huh?  Look, here’s the thing.  One way or another, you’re going in my mouth-”

            “Maggie!” Scott couldn’t help but gasp on the edge of tears, totally unconcerned with the pleading in his tone.  “M-M-Mom s-said…”

            “I heard what Mom said, little loser,” Maggie snapped quietly.  “And, again: I’m going to put you in my mouth.  You can’t do anything about that, so you might as well listen to the rest.”

            “What?” Scott said, managing a stinging gulp.

            “You don’t say anything about it to Mom.  At all.  You don’t stutter at me or make a single little complaint about it, and…”

            “W-What about the… the weeds?” Scott choked.

            “I’ll do them, obviously.  What do I care?  It’ll take me fifteen minutes tops since I’m normal.”

            “Oh.”

            “You’ll be along for the ride, of course, you just don’t have to do them yourself…” the girl added with a snicker.  With her other hand, she ran her fingers through her blonde locks, twirling a few silky tufts as she went in thought.

            “So…” Scott muttered boldly, deciding that with his fate already decided, he might as well hazard some commentary.  “So what makes this a deal?”
            “I’m glad you asked,” Maggie simpered with a grin as she tilted her head to the side.  Once she’d finished brushing her fingers through her hair, her free hand arrived in front of Scott’s face and she began to stroke his miniscule cranium with the tip of her pinky with such tenderness it almost reminded the young man rather creepily of the soothing massages his girlfriend would give him whenever he was overwhelmed by his home life.

            “Why?”

            “Because if you let me put you in my mouth without whining and without telling Mom, I’ll do your stupid weeds, and I’ll call Ella so you can talk to her.”

            Scott frowned, his heart catching in his chest, and already knew exactly what he had to do right now, however much it made him ache to imagine the strain.  He opened his mouth, his throat dry, and spoke up again: “How do I know you won’t tell Mom?”

            It was a stupid question, he knew, because he was by far the more disadvantaged negotiator here, seeing as his sister would basically get whatever terms she wanted without much change if he refused his half of the “deal.”  At worst, he could earn his sister a scolding of some variety from Judy.  Still, his hope couldn’t resist making him ask.

            “Because I won’t, weirdo,” she said with surprising frankness.  “Not that you’ve got much reason to try saying no anyway, but I won’t.”

            “Okay,” Scott managed with agreement, his eyes now locked to his sister’s enormous lips below as they gently shifted to speak each spiteful word.

            “Are we good, then?” Maggie asked, not bothering to hide her smile.  “We have a deal?”

            “Yes,” the young man said immediately without letting himself think about it, too bitterly humiliated in his requirement to linger on it for much longer.

            “Awesome,” the girl giggled, lowering Scott down into her palm once again.  “First things first: clothes off so you can suit back up.”

            Shivering, no longer completely out of fear but now out of simple emotional degeneration, Scott focused on the detailed floor of his sister’s fleshy palm and threw his shirt, pants, and even underwear down to the malleable ground without another moment of hesitation.  It was an act that, in the past, would’ve put him through the emotional wringer, but now he did it as easily as anything; there were more important things to worry about.  He forced himself to ignore Maggie’s tittering at the sight of such a debasement: it was the first time he’d willingly stripped himself down in her hands.

            Think of Ella.  Think of Ella.  Think of Ella.

            “That’s my good boy,” Maggie whispered with simmering satisfaction, and suddenly Scott could hear that Jekyll-and-Hyde tone of hers fighting its way back to the surface.  The menace in her tenor was shrinking back and being replaced with pure and simple curiosity that stretched far beyond mere academic interest into a realm too revolting to contemplate at this tenuous juncture.

            She was staring at him, up and down, all over, no longer completely out of cruelty, but just because she wanted to.  He could feel her blue eyes drilling into him, and he wanted to become sick at the mere thought of it.

            Maggie had seen all he had to offer a multitude of times before, far too many to truly get hung up on at this point in his life, but before she’d only ever stared at him as a sibling she could so easily pick on, and in later years, simply an anatomically correct doll.

            Now it was different, gut-wrenchingly so, and like at the soccer game, he felt more exposed in front of her than ever before.

            But this time, he couldn’t just curl up into his own dark little void beneath her and escape it for however long he had to to fend off a breakdown.  He couldn’t just be an island, floating in the nothingness and ignorance.  He was going to have to face this thing sooner or later, and seeing as how he was about to be put into his little sister’s mouth, “sooner” seemed like it had been decided for him.

            Think of Ella. Think of Ella.  Think of Ella.

            “Isn’t that so much better?” Maggie posed rhetorically at her brother’s silence, and suddenly her hand was rising up toward her chin.  “Now, I highly suggest you take a deep breath here pretty quick.”

            “Wait!  The… the suit.  What about the-” he practically screeched, realizing the crushing gravity of the situation with each additional word out of Maggie’s mouth.

            “Okay, so I may have fibbed a little, Scotty,” she said with a shrug.  “Pull it together.”

            “But I need…”

            “What you need is to make that your last complaint about it, like I said, if you still want this deal to happen,” the diabolical sixteen-year-old blurted coldly.  “Besides, I’m not stupid.  If I put you in with your clothes on or the little scuba suit, it might still be wet when Mom gets back, and that would be bad.  For both of us.  So now, we’re gonna both play the quiet game.  Starting now.”

            Scott fought back a terrified scream in his throat, utterly bare and defenseless at an inch, while Maggie’s parted lips lowered down to cover as much of her palm as she could until he was rapidly ensconced in the heat and darkness, already feeling the moisture of the muggy air on his every exposed skin cell.

            He stood alone for a moment, trembling, forcing himself to keep from making a sound or stumbling in the blackness, when Maggie’s tongue suddenly tackled him from behind.  With its stickiness and girth, it easily managed to scoop Scott’s meager frame up and pin him to the roof of her mouth as the whole terrifying roller coaster shifted upright again, until all that held the young man up from tumbling down to a base of teeth and pooled sputum was the dexterous might of his little sister’s pointed tongue.

            With the colossal girl’s teeth clacked shut again and lips firmly sealed, Scott felt free to let out a few panicked gasps he’d been managing to hold in, though at this point they only escaped his throat as airy blips.

            He wanted to shiver, but every additional movement he made allowed his sister’s cascading saliva to reach the few remaining specks of his body that hadn’t been coated in the hot, gooey miasma yet.  A bubbly bundle of churned froth ran down his back and he gasped in surprise, having no way to see anything in the absolute darkness, and he closed his eyes and only breathed in short bursts, the same technique he used when trapped in Maggie’s shoe, but somehow it didn’t work here.  It was all becoming too real, and every time he’d try to force himself to ignore his senses, he’d hear the squelch of spit under the tongue or feel a fresh wave of heat unfurling from the back of the girl’s throat.

            The first full contact of the tongue with his crotch took place as he was folded down into the valley of the organ.  It sent Scott into a moment of full-body convulsions at the shock of it, the sticky lubricant coating every inch of every last bodily secret he had remaining.  If Maggie noticed this final application of pressure to his miniscule member, she didn’t seem to care or shy away from it, allowing him to ride out the motion with his entire front flush against her squirming muscle.

            He knew such a meeting was inevitable given his lack of clothes, but that didn’t make it any less loathsome or shamefully goose bump-inducing.  In a few seconds, no matter how enraged he became with himself, he knew his intensely pent-up physical frustrations would begin to win out, just as they had in Nancy’s hands; he could already feel the familiar criminalizing tingling beneath his skin that always preluded the upcoming expansion, and there was nothing he could do as the droves of saliva washed over his body, Maggie’s taste buds incidentally massaging his loins.

            Think of Ella.  Think of Ella.  Think of Ella.

            This abominable sensation was miraculously interrupted before it could get any traction in Scott’s baser synapses, and luckily before he had the chance to begin stiffening.  A throaty rumble emanated from all sides as Maggie snickered with feverish delight at her good fortunes, vibrating her brother’s body as she tucked him into her inner cheek.  Then, entire mouth compressing and undulating until Scott was hugged on all sides by slimy flesh and exploratory taste buds, she began to pulse.  Over and over, hot saliva sloshed back over his shoulders and back with each repetition, and he realized what was happening to his body.

            His sister was sucking on him.

            The realization made him instinctively gasp with shock and disgust, his entire frame cringing, but opening his mouth immediately filled him with regret as well as a pint of Maggie’s broiling spit. Instantly he set about trying to choke it back up, managing to cough out enough mouthfuls of it so that his lungs weren’t filled with the stuff, but another gut punch from the girl’s tongue had flicked him back into her other cheek for another round of sucking, and a massive mouthful of it made its way down his gullet.

            He couldn’t help but shudder again, feeling more violated than ever, tasting the intimate flavors of his sister’s mouth now with every labored inhalation in ways more detailed than even the sixteen-year-old was probably capable of.  Distant remains of minty morning toothpaste long covered up by the day’s meals.  Tangy marina from her school lunch.  Cinnamon chewing gum, probably a few hours old.  The foul, bacterial reek of the very back of her tongue where the girl evidently was not particularly adept at brushing thoroughly.  Scott, in his terrified state of adrenaline-soaked focus, was now a connoisseur of his little sister’s spit.

            It was beyond perverse, filling the mouth’s inch-tall prisoner with the desire to stick his finger down his throat and upchuck it, despite knowing that such a thing would be almost certain suicide while he shakily carried out his half of Maggie’s bargain.  Lucky enough for the young man, this concern was quickly pushed to the back of his survival-focused mind when his sister’s tongue slipped out from under him again, allowing him to plop into the moist floor of her mouth, frothy saliva filling in around the corners like a wading pool almost as soon as he’d settled meekly onto his haunches.

            And then the tongue was lowering again, like a soggy mattress and twice as heavy, pinning the twenty-one-year-old flat onto his face.  His head dunked back into the slobbery mayhem, his air once again cut off, and his heart fluttered in panic.  After a few seconds, no change was made; she seemed to be content with storing him underneath the monstrous slithering beast for the time being, with his head forced into the swamp of spittle.

            What if she couldn’t tell what she was doing?  What if she was just having her fun, and he suffocated?

            What if he literally drowned in his sister’s mouth, choking on the limitless gallons of her hot saliva?

            Despite himself, knowing that impacting the muscular might of the teen’s tongue would be impossible unless she herself wanted to lurch it off his trembling form, he began to kick and scream, thrashing his arms with as much insignificant motion as the firm give of the organ’s squishy flesh would provide.  More viscous blobs of saliva poured over his lips but he didn’t care, knowing at this point that he would be out of air very shortly if he didn’t do something.

            And then suddenly it was lifting off of him, decompressing just enough that he was able to gasp in a few more tormented breaths of the steamy, tainted air and refill his lungs with the sickly flavor of Maggie’s muggy breath.

            She knew precisely what she was doing.  He could see that now, and though he was now convinced she wouldn’t let him die in here on accident, the fact that she was apparently perfectly content with letting him believe such a thing was possible did little to assuage the realization.

            There was no escape, either from the strength of his little sister’s tongue, or from the living, squishy, writhing nightmare of it all.  He was in the moment to stay.

            Think of Ella.  Think of Ella.  Think of Ella.

            “Yeah, girly, just come on up when you get here.  The garage door’s unlocked and I’m just hanging in my room.  What?  Yeah, with Scott.  No, he’s not in my shoe,” Maggie said with playfully false indignity into her cell phone, reclining on her bed, while her other hand hovered over her stomach and brandished the nude inch-tall form of Scott by his sides between her firm thumb and index finger.  Her eyes remained unblinkingly glued to him in observation despite her focus on the conversation.  “God, what kind of sister do you think I am, Libs?  Yeah.  Yeah, I know.  Okay, I’ll see ya in a couple.”

            Tapping the screen of her phone with a shrug, Maggie let the device slide from her palm and onto the comforter of her bed, and with a grin spreading over her soft lips, her attention returned fully to her sibling, who stood at a fragile stature half the height of her thumb.

            “Can you believe her?” the girl queried with a disbelieving shake of her head and a little giggle as she extended the pointer finger of her newly freed hand, slowly approaching the immobilized form of her bare brother.  “She just thinks you live in my shoes, I guess.”

            Scott hardly reacted as Maggie’s fingertip gently met his body and began to stroke with a tiny flick of her digit from his chest to his stomach with a motion that would’ve barely tickled a normally proportioned human being but acted as more of a massage to the incapacitated young man.  It wasn’t that it didn’t register as contact, or even necessarily feel bad on his ravaged form, but he was far too close to the brink of despondency at the moment to sum up the desire to respond.

            He was slaked with the gummy dried remnants of his sister’s saliva over every last inch of his body, in some places thicker than others, the pale blobs of the thicker mucus-lined sputum even still evident in certain places.  His hair was matted down in a disgusting sticky film.  His eyes were empty, blinded by the light after having spent the better part of what he eventually gathered to be forty-five minutes inside the pitch-black hovel of Maggie’s mouth.  His lips could only quiver nervously, his mind still too haunted by the sensations he’d been put through on that seemingly eternal roller coaster atop the teen’s worming, curious tongue.

            “Don’t look so sad, Scotty,” Maggie encouraged with disarming sweetness in her tone as she continued lovingly caressing her brother’s abdomen with the tip of her finger.  “Your favorite one of my friends is coming up to see you.  She’ll give you a nice little break.  You know she will.”

            Scott managed a nod, but that was all.  He was indeed relieved that it was Libby coming up to visit.  In fact, his current appearance of spit-slogged debasement would probably prompt the girl to cradle him in her warm palm and defend him even more ferociously to Maggie, who no-doubt would descend into unstoppable giggles even as she willingly passed over her human chewing gum.

            It didn’t really matter who was coming. A mythical angel of mercy could’ve been on the way up the stairs to carry him away to a lifetime on a beach where he’d never have to hear from his family ever again.  It was irrelevant.  She’d won already.

            Maggie had gotten everything she wanted, more than she’d ever hinted at desiring.  At this point, he was quite certain she could give him that bath she’d been threatening and he wouldn’t even have to bat an eye.  Not after what he’d gone through.  He’d stripped in her hand.  He’d done it without a single complaint and even agreed to do it himself.  He’d gone in her mouth where her tongue had explored every nook and cranny of his body.

            “Hey, now,” the sixteen-year-old cooed even more tenderly than before, bringing her captive closer to her face again so she could hush her tone further.  “Put on a happy face.  You made it, little boy.  You’ll get to talk to your girlfriend later.  Doesn’t that make you happy?”

            Scott nodded again to appease his sister as he rested limply in the vice of her firm fingertip flesh, but again, in the moment, it felt pointless.  He doubted, even, that his sister was being disingenuous in her offer.  What did she care now who he talked to or what rules were broken?  Everything she wanted was hers.  He was hers to toy with now however she wanted so long as she occasionally threw a meager reward on the table for his dehumanizing compliance and silence, and worst of all, both knew that he would hungrily lap up such an offer whenever it was posed.

            It made him too nauseous to admit it to himself, but Scott knew already in his heart that his ventures between his sister’s monstrous lips at the size of a thimble were far from over, because all she would have to do was promise him the briefest reprieve from his torment later on, and he would take it without hesitation once again.

            This much of a conclusion alone was nearly enough to send Scott into dry sobs again like before he’d been deposited onto his sister’s tongue an hour before, but he forced himself to choke them down.  With Libby on the way, he didn’t want to let himself become even more unnaturally low than he’d already reached.  As it was, he knew he must’ve barely resembled a human being, globbed so thoroughly in a garb of dried saliva and pinched unwaveringly like fish bait between the all-mighty fingers of a blonde sixteen-year-old goddess.

            Her plaything, her toe jewelry, and now more recently, her candy.

            “Hey, Mags,” came the singsong voice of Libby Hammond as she swung the door open gingerly enough that it didn’t slam upon meeting the wall.  Her short red locks, adorably frilly on the ends, hung around the level of her chin, and her stark green speckled irises were already searching the room intently as soon as she was inside, a thumb pressed inquisitively against her lips as she observed the scene.

            Scott, blinking blearily as he looked up, saw her flinch as she recognized him after the requisite moment needed to identify him through the layer of gooey filth.

            “Libs, come sit with us.  We were just having a nice little chat about… um…” Maggie drawled with a snicker, frowning as her gaze returned to her brother.  “What was it again, Scotty?”

            “Ella,” Scott mustered dryly solely by virtue of the subject.

            “Right!  His girlfriend.  We were talking about his girlfriend.  Personally, I think he could use a woman’s advice, because OBVIOUSLY he hasn’t been doing such a great job of keeping her around recently,” Maggie commented as sincerely as possible, though her words stung all the same, just as she intended them.  “Maybe you can give him some?”

            “Advice?  On his… girlfriend?” Libby managed uncomfortably, clearly detesting the mention of such a thing with regard to the tiny older boy she’d developed such a crush on over the last few years.  Shaking her head, though, she brushed her fingers through her bangs and fought out of her embarrassed stupor, furrowing her brow.  “Um, Maggie?”

            “M-hmm?” the girl responded without looking back as she continued stroking along Scott’s stomach.

            “Is he… okay?  What… what happened to him?”

            “Oh, nothing.  We just worked out a little deal, and then we got to spend some extra time together today.  No problem.”

            “Where was…”

            “Seriously, Libs, it’s okay.  He was just in my mouth for a couple minutes,” Maggie insisted with the most cavalier attitude she could, shrugging but whispering the pivotal m-word in her explanation, just in case Judy returned at any moment to hear.

            “What?” Libby gaped in a hush, taking a few steps further forward until she was standing by the bed.  “In your…”

            “I know.  It was kinda funny, really.  Like having a little circus happening in your mouth, the way he moves around.  You could try him if you wanted.”

            “I… well, I… no!” Libby corrected emphatically, her tone betraying at least a partial desire to experience such a sensation before letting her concern over Scott’s wellbeing rather than her own lustful curiosities take over.  She lowered the upturned palm of her right hand toward Maggie, just below where Scott was being firmly but not painfully gripped between the blonde’s thick fingertips, and held it there expectantly.  “Let me see him.”

            “Aww, c’mon.  He’s all warmed up and everything.  Just look at him,” Maggie wheedled, knowing her friend probably wasn’t going to budge on her position now, but was having fun with teasing her anyway.

            Scott fought back the urge to gaze pleadingly up at Libby’s face, but given how much of his ragdoll-like form was encrusted with his sister’s spit, he was far too humiliated already to chance such a thing.

            “I am looking at him, Maggie.  He looks… really, really tired.  Seriously, give him to me.”

            “Oh, sure thing, Libs.  If you say so,” Maggie responded, and suddenly her lips were unfurling, her writhing pink muscle emerging with a soft squish against the slathered interior.  Before anyone in the room had a chance to say anything else, she was pressing Scott flush against her tongue and working him back and forth against the sticky, rippled surface once again.

“Maggie!” Libby countered aggressively, and with the hand she’d been patiently cupping under her friend’s chin she wrapped her fist around the totalitarian sibling’s wrist, trying to force her to cease and desist with her current activity.

            “Wha?  ‘Oo ‘ill wan’ ‘im?” Maggie asked innocently as she fought back a giggle and resisted the pull of Libby’s hand, unable to close her lips to form consonants, as she continued caressing her limp captive’s body over every inch of her tongue.

            “C’mon, please stop it.  He’s had enough,” Libby requested with concern as she began shaking Maggie’s forearm in a failed second effort to end Scott’s torment.

            “You’re gonna make me drop him!” Maggie chuckled truthfully, finally withdrawing her miniscule brother from the gooey reclamation of him she was apparently making by reapplying a thick gloss of saliva over his torso and limbs.  “Seriously, he’s only an inch right now.  If you shake me too hard, I might not be able to hold on.”

            “Then stop licking him like he’s a piece of candy.  For God’s sake,” Libby grumbled, her tone increasingly adamant, though she released her grip on the girl’s trembling wrist at this unfortunate suggestion.

            “What makes you think he’s not?” Maggie said with a shrug, refocusing her attention on her brother as her baby blue irises seemed to alight again as a grin glowed victoriously from her lips.  “I bet Scotty’s not even sure anymore.  Are you, little boy?”

            Scott had neither the energy nor the willpower to try defiantly answering no, though he had a feeling the end result wasn’t going to change dependent on his response.  This didn’t happen to be one of those instances where his sister was upholding her occasional policy of giving him choices.

            “See?  He doesn’t even know what to say,” Maggie snickered.

            “That’s because you’re scaring him,” Libby insisted desperately.  “Please stop.”

            “You know what he did, right?” cut in the sixteen-year-old with acute clarity that sliced right through her previously playful tenor.

            “What?  You mean the…”

            “I mean, you know why he’s here, right?  And why I get to do this if I want?”

            “Because… of the Shrink Act.”

            “No, not just that,” Maggie corrected.  “Because he was driving his car after he’d been drinking a ton and didn’t care what happened to anyone else.  And because people got hurt.  You know that too.”

            “I…” Libby mumbled, coughing in her throat.  “I… I know that…”

            “And you just want me to carry him around and give him kisses and tell him everything’s gonna be okay, don’t you?” the middle Stevens child accused in the least demanding tone she could manage, her brow furrowed, as she continued brandishing her brother just an inch away from her lips as they billowed hot air.  “Don’t you?”

            “I’m not saying that.  But… but everybody needs a break sometimes, and the way you’re treating him right now…”          
            “What?”

            “It’s… it’s not right.  How’s he supposed to get better?”

            Maggie scowled, her face paler than it had been, as she redirected her attention to the tiny life pinched between her fingers again, her face contorted into a determined sneer.

            “He knows what he did.  And we made a deal.  He knows he needs to do this to keep up his end.  Don’t you, Scotty?” she intoned gracefully.

            “Scott?” Libby questioned.  “What’s she talking about?”

            “Go ahead,” Maggie continued to her brother, running her fingers through her silky golden locks, hardly able to keep the maniacal smirk from cracking. “I’ll stop right now if you want, and the deal’s off.  All you have to do is ask me to lick you again, one more time, and I’ll give you what we agreed.”

            “Agreed?  Maggie, what are you-” the girl sputtered, wringing her hands together.

            “Go on,” the girl commanded in a chillingly delicate voice, almost a lullaby.  “Tell big sissy you want her to lick you again, little boy.”

            “Scott?” Libby whispered.

            “I w-want big sissy…” Scott croaked, evolving to a new level of self-loathing, and in equal measure feeling darkly encouraged by the shaky promise of what laid at the end of this ordeal.  Even if he had to give Maggie the satisfaction of hearing this said, he would not let her break him before he earned what he’d been working for all this time.  He wouldn’t.  “…to l-lick me ag-gain.”

            “Thought so,” Maggie giggled, shutting her eyes as she deposited her brother back onto the flattened, soggy plain of her tongue.  This time, rather than merely slaking him along the surface and slurping into his face, she laid him spread-eagled and face-down on the sticky pink terrain and placed her index and middle fingers onto his back, gingerly pressing down with just enough pressure to let him sink into the saliva-streaked valley as deeply as possible without bending his spine.

            Libby, dumbfounded by the grotesque sight, stumbled back a step and continued nervously rubbing her fists together, before finally getting her bearings and frowning.

            “I can’t believe you made him say that,” the girl mumbled, her voice quivering.

            “Huh?  ‘e ‘aid it, ‘ot ‘e!” Maggie defended with a disingenuous chuckle.  Satisfied with the way Scott had been buried into her tongue, she curled it around him like a slimy burrito and closed her lips again, sealing him inside a second layer of heat and slobbery flesh.  Her cheeks constricted and she began lightly sucking on him again.

            “That’s not fair.  He just said it because he knew you’d do something worse if he didn’t,” Libby declared angrily, taking a step back toward the bed, her hands on her hips.  “Maggie.  That’s enough.  Stop it.”

            The sixteen-year-old Stevens daughter held up a pointer finger to her friend, indicating her desire for her to wait, and tilted her chin up slightly as she rolled her brother back between her inner cheeks again, the excess saliva sloshing audibly as she pinned him beneath the mammoth weight of her tongue and tossed him like a cork against her palate.  A glistening droplet of it even managed to escape at the corner of the girl’s lips, but she wiped it away with her wrist before it could dribble down her chin.

            “You sure you still want him?” Maggie managed to say, only partially able to open up, given her full mouth.  A tiny arm appeared in the brief opening of her lips, but her tongue curled back underneath it and it disappeared from view, followed by the girl’s resealing of the plush pink barrier into the darkness.

            “Yes.  Give him to me now,” Libby demanded, her volume rising, as she cupped her hand beneath Maggie’s chin again.  “Spit.  Him.  Out.”

            Her attention caught by the sudden rigid imperiousness of her friend’s tone, Maggie shrugged and let a smile creep over her lips before scooping her brother back up into her tongue and opening her mouth just wide enough to spit his flailing inch-tall body into Libby’s waiting hand.

            Weakly sprawled and exposed, the inch-tall Scott breathed a choked sigh of relief, coughing up a couple mouthfuls of his sister’s frothy saliva into the creases of Libby’s warm palm, as she delicately curled her fingers around him in a defensive wall and carried him toward the bathroom, away from Maggie’s raucous snickering.

            Scott blinked back into full consciousness as a trickle of lukewarm water poured gently over his body and began to pool around him in the titanic cupped hand of his sister’s friend Libby.  He smacked his lips a few times, dizzy beyond belief and wanting to be alone so badly he would’ve just about traded his soul for some solitude at this moment.

            “Feeling any better?” Libby asked tenderly, her voice hushed lower than was necessary for the inch-tall young man’s ears, though he had a feeling it was more so Maggie wouldn’t hear her and receive further comedic fodder.

            “Y-Yeah,” Scott uttered.

            “Did she hurt you?” the girl followed up.  “Anywhere?”

            “I’m… I’m fine,” he answered mostly truthfully.  His sister had actually been disturbingly adept at playing with him between her cheeks and beneath her tongue without causing bodily harm beyond some sickening vertigo.  That was never the real point of it, and both of them knew it well.

            “You don’t have to lie.  I wouldn’t say anything,” Libby insisted in another whisper.

            “I’m not.”

            The girl grimaced meekly, obviously not fully believing him, but was aware that this was as forward as he was going to be.  As she continued holding him under the water, her face flushed a soft rose, and Scott was reminded that he was sitting nude in the palm of a girl five years his junior who, at most in her romantic pursuits, had received her first kiss.  And given how shy she was, he had to doubt even that somewhat.

            “Sorry about… not having anything… on,” Scott gulped, hoping to break the ice as much as possible.  If nothing else, he didn’t want the girl to feel awkward or discouraged from helping him out like this in the future, because these were just about the only real breaks he got anymore.

            “You don’t have to apologize,” Libby said with a frown.  “I know she takes them away.”

            “Yeah…” Scott mumbled, curling himself into the fetal position to shield as much of himself from view as possible.

            “I… I didn’t even really think about… I m-mean, do you want me to put you d-down?  Since you’re… you know.” Libby stuttered anxiously, slipping easily back into the nervously tittering and sweet little girl that the young man remembered hanging onto the clearly unbalanced friendship she shared with his domineering and significantly more popular sister.

            He almost resented the fact that Libby’s more submissive personality made it difficult for her to split away from such a source of emotional poison and turmoil, but he couldn’t quite, as her presence now was just about all that was keeping him from descending into an even deeper depression.

            “It’s okay.  Don’t worry about it,” Scott said quickly, still eager to keep her from feeling worse than she already was.

            “I’ll get you a tissue in a second.  I… don’t know if she’ll just take it again, but…”

            “Thanks,” Scott said.  “Really.”

            “Don’t worry about it,” she cooed, crouching down to the sink so she could be closer to eye level with the miniscule passenger of her palm.  With her free hand, Libby brushed her frilly strawberry bangs off her lightly freckled forehead.  Scott could sense her speckled green eyes were locked to the object of her crush with great intensity, unable to help themselves from observing, but at this moment, he couldn’t have cared if she was holding him right under her eyeballs for close academic study.

            Idly, though, he couldn’t help but wonder what it was she found so appealing about him, even now.  Given his above-average looks, he could’ve understood where it came from when he stood at full height, fully clothed, and not physically spent from being sucked on between someone’s cheeks, but certainly not here.

            Now, he was like an injured lemming as he curled into himself in the center of her palm, half the height of the girl’s thumb, and fresh from having openly requested that Maggie put him back in her mouth in order to pathetically complete his end of a bargain that the girl might very easily back out of without a second’s hesitation anyway.

            And though Maggie had laid it on thick in her usual way, there was no denying some of the points she’d tried to make to justify her cruelty.  He’d pre-emptively ended the life of an unborn child and nearly crippled a young woman, all thanks to his carelessness and selfishness that he couldn’t even remember because of his drunkenness.  What could this caring and morally conscious girl want with him?  Was she still just blinded by a lovesick schoolgirl crush like she had been for the past three years, or did she truly see something in him?

            He couldn’t imagine the latter even being a possibility.

            He suddenly had to remove these meandering thoughts from his mind as quickly as possible, as the longer he lingered on them, the more it made him start to consider the possibility of a reconciliation with Ella and how the odds of it were probably slimmer than his inch-tall frame at this point.  Those were revelations he didn’t particularly care to have now, not after everything he’d been through just for the simple hope of having a shot at it.

            He’d already been forcibly placed into the mouths of both his mother and sister in a single day like a human gumball, with the almost certain promise of both activities continuing in the future.  Any other developments less positive than that were liable to put him over the edge.

            “C’mon, Libs, open up.  You know I didn’t mean it,” Maggie groaned from the other side of the bathroom door as she rapped lightly on it.

            “In a minute,” Libby called, turning her head in the direction of the foreboding lie before returning her gaze to Scott and sighing liltingly.  “I’m… sorry.”

            “It’s fine.  She was going to do that again even if you’d grabbed me then,” Scott said earnestly, far too spent to get hung up now on what might’ve been.

            “No, no, I mean… about all of this.  How you… live here,” she said in an incredibly hushed voice such that only the young man sprawled in her palm could make it out clearly.

            “What do you mean?”

            “What your mom and your sister do… and I know her other friends do it, too.  Play with you, I mean, when they come over.  I’ve heard some of them talk about it at school.  I… I just…”

            “Don’t worry about it.”

            “But I do worry,” Libby said, her voice cracking slightly.  “I… think about you a lot, Scott.”

            “Well, it’s not worth it.  I did something wrong, and now I’m here paying for it,” he said.  His words were genuine, despite his loathing of his general existence for the past month (and probably longer than that when he really thought about it).  It seemed unfair to make someone else get bent out of shape over it when he was the one who would have to face it.

            “I know you did.  But… but you’re not paying for it.  Not like this.  This is…”

            “What?”

            “…wrong.”

            “Don’t make me blow down the door, Libs. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll go find the bathroom key that Mom keeps in the dresser drawer!” Maggie threatened jokingly, though her tone softened as she spoke, indicating she was probably walking away to fetch it.

            “Maybe it is,” Scott said with another authentic shrug of indifference.  “It’s out of my hands right now.”

            “But… but maybe I can…”

            “It’s out of yours, too.”

            “You’re still… in mine, though,” Libby commented quietly, her fingers curling in a little further for added protection.  She finally shut the gentle trickle of sink water off and allowed the last remnants of the warm, refreshing liquid to pool in puddles around her temporary charge.

            “Thank you for what you did there, Libby,” Scott said gratefully.  “I… I really do appreciate it.”

            “You’re welcome.  I know it must get so… so…”

            “Hey, is everybody cooled down now?  I told you it was just a joke,” Maggie sang as she managed to unlock the door and stick her head in the opening.  Her eyes fell on Scott floating in a pool of warm water in Libby’s cupped palm and she had to clasp a hand over her mouth to keep from snorting in laughter.  “Having fun in here, you two?”

            “I just wanted to clean him off,” Libby insisted as she plucked a tissue from the box situated in the center of the sink.  “Give him a break for a second.”

            “Mm-hmmm, right, a break.  So are we heading out, or what?”

            “Can… can we take Scott?  I want to make sure he gets a little longer,” Libby pleaded as she lowered the fabric of the tissue down onto Scott, who bunched up what he could into his tiny fists and began toweling off.

            “Aww, I’d love to, but we can’t.  He only gets to leave once a week, and Mom kinda reserved him for her party thing Wednesday,” Maggie sighed with arms crossed, obviously irritated at this decree.  “We could’ve given him a ride in those sandals you got a month ago.”

            “A ride in… no!” Libby began, a hint of floating dreaminess in her voice, before scowling.  Looking down, she delicately removed the tissue once Scott was adequately dried.  “You know I won’t do that.  You know that.”

            “Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m just teasin’ you Libs cuz you make me laugh,” Maggie babbled with a smirk on her lips.  “Now c’mon, the place is gonna close if we don’t get going soon.”

            “What about…”

            “Just leave him there.  I’ll make sure he gets all tucked away when we get back,” the bratty blonde said.

            “Can we make him a little bigger first?  I don’t want to leave him like this.”

            “Like what?  He’s like that all the time.  He knows how to handle himself.  Don’t you, Scotty?”

            “Please, Mags?  He’s been punished enough for today.  Just make him a little bigger.”

            “Oh, fine, I’ll be right back with the thing.  But then we have to get a move-on,” Maggie said with a roll of her eyes as she sauntered toward the stairs to descend and retrieve the PMRD.

            With his sister out of sight, Scott’s muscles were able to relax again as he savored the few remaining moments he had in the invitingly cushy palm of his sixteen-year-old gargantuan redheaded savior.

            “You… you know I wouldn’t, right Scott?” Libby queried as she brought him up to the level of her chin, still speaking in a whispered tone as her eyes darted toward the upstairs landing suspiciously.

            “Wouldn’t what?”

            “Put you down there.  Under my f-f… you know.  Ever,” she swore with a determined furrow of her brow.

            “Oh.  Yeah, I know.  Of course,” Scott said with a trusting nod.  From her emphasis on the words, it was clear it wasn’t just him she was fully convincing.  Despite the tone in her voice he’d picked up on, he was in no position to fault her.

            “I could try again to get Maggie to let me take you with us to the store.  I promise, I won’t let her touch you while we hang out, I’ll just keep you with me, in my pocket.  But nothing will happen to you; I’ll keep my hand over you the whole time,” Libby suggested hopefully.  With her other hand, she stroked the tip of her pinky finger along Scott’s back in an effort to soothe him with enough tenderness that it barely moved the thumbprint-sized young man.

            As desperately appealing as such a prospect was to the twenty-one-year-old at this moment, if his mother had indeed reserved him for her party, and if Maggie was talked into stealing that privilege away so early, Judy would have some choice words with the middle Stevens child, and then undoubtedly the blame of such a conversation would be inherited by Scott, either directly or indirectly.  It was out of the question.

            “No, I’ll be all right.  Really.  I just need to rest.”

            “Are… are you sure?  I think I could maybe get her to do it.”

            “Trust me.  It’s for the best if I stay here,” Scott promised as comfortingly as he could, sensing the difficulty the girl was having.

            “If you’re sure,” Libby said with a disappointed sigh, her eyes shooting furtively to the stairs one last time before she leaned her face in even closer to her upturned palm.  “I’ll be back to see you as soon as I can.  Don’t worry.”

            “T-Thank you,” Scott said, warmed by this promise.

            “It’s the least I can do,” she cooed as the rumble of Maggie’s feet aggressively leaping up the stairs two at a time echoed in the hall.

            “All set.  Put him down, Libs.  I’ll make him a little bigger and then we can head out,” Scott’s sister declared, the PMRD already drawn and pointed like the weapon it was.

            “Okay,” Libby croaked, obviously pained by the parting of ways, as she made eye contact with Scott, who gave her an encouraging nod.  Placing him down on the bathroom sink with more tenderness than Scott had been shown by his sister or even his mother at this size in a very long time, the girl took a few steps back to give Maggie some room.

            The emerald green flash of the device brought Scott the familiar chill under his skin, though in this case, the sight of the thing was a source of great comfort; after all, technologically, there was nowhere to go but up.  He blinked as the world around him doubled in size, still leaving him at a fairly diminutive stature.

            “Maggie, is that all?” Libby moaned with audible annoyance.  “What, you made him two instead of one?”

            “Yeah.  What?  You asked me to make him bigger, and I did.”

            “That’s still like nothing…”

            “Ugh.  Fine, what do you want him to be?  Three?”

            “Can you make him twelve?” the redhead asked innocently.

            “How about we compromise and make him four?  That’s my final offer, Libs, I just… don’t really feel like seeing him like this where I can actually make stuff out, you know?”

            “Just do it already, okay?” Libby huffed, crossing her arms and leaning against the doorframe, and flashing Scott an apologetic simper.

            “Okay.  One four-inch little boy, coming right up,” Maggie agreed with a chuckle as she made the adjustment on the touch screen and pulled the trigger again.

            Scott breathed a sigh of relief as he rose up to the promised height, some tension in his shoulders finally released.  It still wasn’t much, but compared to the magnitude of the world around him and his own fragility at his minimum height moments before, he felt just a little more courageous.

            “There.  Happy?” Maggie asked her friend, holding a hand out dramatically in Scott’s direction.

            “Um.  I guess,” Libby answered, looking the young man over a final time now that the sight of his naked form had become a little more visible, clearly unable to help herself.  With embarrassment, Scott scooped up the damp tissue again, now strong enough to handle it on his own, and bundled it around his more sensitive areas.  She seemed to notice this immediately and urgently averted her eyes toward the floor, eliciting another snicker from Maggie.

            “Cool.  Thanks for the fun, Scotty.  I’ll be back later, and… we’ll make sure you get to use the phone like a big boy,” Maggie said, whispering the final phrase, despite Judy still being absent from the house.  “Okay?”

            “Okay,” he answered dryly, though he had to keep from trembling with excitement, even as part of him remained firmly under the assumption that it was just a rug she planned to pull out from under him at the last possible second.

            “Let’s get going, Libs,” she said with a wave of her hand as she deposited the PMRD into her purse, which was slung around her shoulder, and made her way back down the hallway.

            “Shouldn’t we move him to a… a…”

            “Nah, he’ll be fine.  C’mon,” Maggie butted in, snatching her reluctant friend’s hand and pulling her out of the bathroom.  Her hand ducked back in to the room one last time to switch off the light, plunging her brother into partial darkness.

            At last left with some isolation, Scott laid on his back in the rolled tissue and waited to hear the sound of the garage door opening and closing a level below, before clenching his eyes shut and unleashing a roar of pent-up frustration, terror, and rage rolled into one cataclysmic emotion.

Kyle Stevens pushed open the bathroom door and flipped on the light switch, clearly in a hurry, when his gaze fell upon the sink, where his older brother was still seated silently at four inches tall.

            “What the… why are you in here in the dark?” the fifteen-year-old groaned with a roll of his eyes.

            “Maggie,” Scott said simply, glancing at the edge of the marble countertop.

            “I thought she left with Libby.”

            “She did.”

            “Why the hell are you four?  She never makes you four,” Kyle observed with a confused frown.

            “Libby asked her.”

            “What were you before that?  One?”

            “Obviously,” Scott deadpanned.

            “Geez,” Kyle grumbled, his eyes darting back and forth between the toilet and Scott, as he shifted his stance from side to side with discomfort.  “I really have to take a piss.”

            “I’ll turn around if that helps,” Scott answered sarcastically, not particularly wanting to interact with anyone now after the ordeal of his afternoon, and shifting himself so that his back was to the commode.

            “Yeah, yeah.  Look, just because Mom and Maggie don’t care if you see them in their underwear doesn’t mean it goes the same way with everyone.  C’mon, stand up, we’re leaving,” Kyle ordered, poising his hand near the edge of the sink.

            “Okay,” Scott shrugged again, rising unsteadily to his feet and keeping the tissue wrapped like a towel around his waist with as much dignity as he could muster.

            “For God’s sake, are you just wearing a Kleenex?” Kyle asked with disgust, withdrawing his hand for a moment.

            “Yeah.”

            “Where are the ones you were wearing before she found you?”

            “Back in Mom’s room, I think, but they’re not going to fit, and she took the PMRD with her.”

            “Of course she did,” Kyle grunted, laying his hand back on the sink.  “Whatever, just hop in and I’ll take you to the dresser with your other stuff.”

            “Really?”

            “Did I stutter?  C’mon, I’m bursting,” Kyle commanded with another tap of his fingers on the surface, more out of urological necessity than anger.

            “Right, right.  Sorry,” Scott peeped as he hurriedly boarded his brother’s hand.  “Um, thanks.”

            “Don’t mention it,” the lanky teen said under his breath as he quickly made his way into Judy’s bedroom toward the top two drawers of her dresser, which for the past month had become Scott’s designated wardrobe.  It contained clothes of all sizes he could be changed to, particularly with Maggie’s penchant for reducing her brother before disrobing him and leaving the garments to be forgotten, which in this case was a plus.

            “No, really.  I… appreciate it, man,” Scott said again as earnestly as possible while his brother dragged open both drawers before lowering his palm into the midst of the folded outfits for his four-inch passenger to disembark.

            “Yeah, well, I said I’d help you if they did this to you, so here we are,” Kyle repeated, crossing his arms while Scott got his bearings on the uneven terrain of the drawer.  “Think there’s something you can use in there?  I saw Mom a couple days ago trying to match stuff up by size, so there’s probably a set for four in there.”

            “I think I’m good,” agreed the twenty-one-year-old as he glanced around the neatly organized piles of clothes, quickly observing several outfits that would suit his needs.  “Listen, I just… wanted to say something real quick before you go.”

            “Can you say whatever it is in two words or less?  Cuz I still have to go really fricking bad,” Kyle groused, though he remained standing in the same place, his attention surprisingly undivided.

            “I’m sorry,” Scott said dryly, having for a while owed this same phrase to his brother that he’d so unsuccessfully tried with Maggie a month before.  The icy reception he’d received from his youngest sibling on his original arrival home after the sentencing had discouraged making an attempt before, but now, regardless of the response it got, Scott knew he just had to get it out in the open.

            Kyle observed his brother for a moment, his forehead furrowed, his eyes obviously searching intently for some sign of disingenuousness or the clever wordplay that Scott had become such a magician with in getting himself out of sticky situations during his youth.

            “I know, man,” the youngest Stevens sibling breathed at last, his tone genuine, finally breaking the gaze with the brother he had once respected like a celebrity as he ambled out of the room and back toward the hall.

            Scott’s breath caught in his chest as he hunkered over the mouthpiece of Maggie’s cell phone, swallowing profusely and licking his lips in a desperate attempt to remove the painful dryness in his throat.  The dull ring sounded out on the lowered volume as Ella’s number flashed on the screen.

            Flanking him on either side were his sister’s smooth, tanned legs as she stretched out on her bed to relax, having deposited Scott and her phone onto the mattress between the valley of her limbs to, against all odds, fulfill her end of the bargain.  Maggie’s toes danced back and forth, scrunching over the edge of the bed in time with the dial tone.  With arms crossed, she was gazing down at him with a simpering smirk and a raised eyebrow to suggest she didn’t believe he’d made a very wise exchange, but the sixteen-year-old had no desire to argue after she’d won the right to use him as her personal gumball without complaint.

            Upon arriving home from her time with Libby and surprising her brother with this bizarrely out-of-character revelation of truth in her previous promises, she’d insisted upon reducing Scott back to one inch in order to make sure the phone call stayed as secret as possible.

            Idly, the young man wondered why she even bothered to offer an excuse such as this.  At least she’d allowed him to keep his clothes, though, to help keep the attention of the rest of the house off of him as she casually carried him up to her room for some privacy.

            The tone buzzed for the eighth time without an answer.

            “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk anymore,” Maggie suggested casually.  Scott shivered and looked his sister in the eye.

            “She’ll answer.”

            “How do you know?” the girl pressed.  Steadily, she drew both of her legs back in toward her body until both feet were flat against the buoyant surface of her pink bed sheets and sinking heavily into the fabric a matter of inches away from her sibling, throwing Scott slightly off balance and forcing him to grip the edge of the phone to stay standing.

            “I just… I just do,” Scott reaffirmed, losing his confidence more and more with each successive drone from the mouthpiece, then added defensively:  “Besides, this is your phone.  She can’t even know it’s me calling yet.”

            “It’d be a huge shame if you went to all that trouble to do this and she doesn’t even want to talk,” Maggie continued teasingly with a tilt of her head and a creeping smirk.

            “She’ll answer.”

            A thirteenth tone.

            Maggie’s right foot slid closer across the springy pink landscape, her big toe pointed downward like a ballerina’s as it neared her inch-tall brother.

            “C’mon, little boy, just give it up and stop worrying about it for now.  Tell you what.  I’ve got a little itch that needs scratching, right in here,” the girl advertised brightly.  Bunching her toes up together again, she parted her big and second toes as far as she could, revealing the tender skin in between at close enough range that Scott could’ve reached out and touched it.

            “Please,” Scott wheedled, fighting the urge to put his hands together in faux-prayer to his sister.  “You… you promised that I could talk to her.”

            Leaning her head against her shoulder and rolling her eyes as emphatically as possible, Maggie huffed out a sigh.  “Well, no I didn’t, actually.  I said I’d help you call her, and I did that.  I can’t make her talk to you, though.  That’s kinda a thing that you have to hope for.”

            Hanging his head and biting his lip, Scott wrung his hands together.  For once, Maggie wasn’t just talking a big game to dampen his spirits.  She was actually being brutally honest, and he knew he might have gotten his hopes into heretofore unexplored sky-high territories when the reality might well be that Ella was done with him.

            “Yeah.  I know,” Scott croaked, crossing his arms.

            “Aww, don’t start crying or anything on me.  C’mere and relax for a bit,” Maggie cooed.  Her foot inched forward until her two toes sandwiched around Scott, who remained motionless, uncaring what happened at this point.  The two plush digits gently squeezed around him in a squishy embrace until they had a good enough grip to lift him safely off the bedspread.

            Grunting with the effort to keep himself level as his sister’s possessive bare foot ascended, Scott couldn’t help but feel silent gratitude that Maggie apparently wasn’t in the mood to squeeze the oxygen out of him at this moment, because she seemed to be holding him with just enough pressure to ensure he couldn’t wriggle free.  The soft appendage lithely kept Scott even with the surface and hovered just six inches over, swaying side to side as though trying to gently rock him into a sense of false security.  And given who the foot belonged to, that was a pretty real possibility, but its passenger was drowning in a little too much apathy to be concerned with this.

            “Feeling happier yet?” Maggie queried with a soft giggle.  “Why don’t you give it a little scratch as long as you’re in there?”

            Shrugging, Scott dug his miniscule fingernails into the doughy wall that made up the crevice between his sister’s toes and commenced kneading as hard as he could, knowing only this level of exertion would actually accomplish anything given his current stature.

            “Hello?” came the soft answer at last from the cell phone.

            Scott craned his neck downward to look at the phone, probably too far away to be heard from this distance, especially when he was surrounded by an echo-dampening wall of foot flesh.         He looked pleadingly up at Maggie’s face, and this time actually put his hands together to show his commitment.  Shrugging, his sister began to lower her foot back toward the phone, before a devious gleam twinkled in her eye and she simply scrunched her toes around Scott, keeping him exactly where he was.  Instead, she plucked the cell up from the cushioned ground between two fingers and lifted it until it was close enough for him to speak into.

            His heart rate rising rapidly and his forehead perspiring, partially from the warm embrace of the giant toes but primarily from nerves, somehow, Scott found the focus to fight through the sheer embarrassment of where he happened to find himself when trying to have what he was fairly certain was the most important phone call of his young adult life.

            “Hey b- Ella,” Scott coughed, stopping himself from using a pet name with her for the time being, assuming that he hadn’t quite worked his way up again to speaking to her in such a flirtatious fashion.  Plus, having his sister listening in on the whole thing didn’t exactly help with his comfort level in this regard.  “It’s me.”

            “…Scott?” came the reply, drier and more reserved than the already meager greeting had been.  “Thanks for getting back to me.”

            “Sorry it took so long.  I had some things to take care of and there just wasn’t time.  I would’ve if I could’ve,” Scott continued, still rather unsure of himself, and careful not to say anything incriminating against his sister.

            “Okay.  Anyway, I wanted to say I probably should’ve called sooner.  I just needed some time.  I mean, all of this… with you… it’s been weird for me.”

            “I understand,” Scott said truthfully.

            “I’m not… mad at you.  Not anymore, at least.  It wasn’t because of that.  Just wanted you to know that, too.”

            “Oh.  T-Thank you,” he blubbered, trying his best not to sound choked up.  “I mean it.”  Maggie’s foot began to bob up and down, but Scott was so in-tune with this heart-racing chain of words that he hardly noticed it.  Slowly, then, she crossed her right foot over her left knee to more comfortably recline on her bed, hoisting her clenched brother up to an even higher height, though this too went virtually unregistered as her hand gripping the phone followed the motion so Scott could continue conversing.

            “Listen, I… was hoping it would be possible for us to meet sometime this week.  I can come to you.  I know you can’t leave very much yet,” Ella proposed.

            “Oh.  Um…”

            “It’s just that there are some things we need to get clear.  Some things I want to get out in the open, I guess,” she said.  “Could that happen?”

            “I… I…” Scott mumbled, knowing how much more difficult it would be to arrange a personal meeting if Judy already didn’t want him on the phone.  Craning his neck to the side, Scott now found himself at eye level with the happily reclining Maggie thanks to her propped foot.  He bit his lip, wondering how tightly he would have to scrunch up his face to indicate his desire for help, and clasped his hands together again.

            Shrugging uncaringly, Maggie simply opened her lips as though having a tongue depressor inserted into her throat and pointed in with a finger, raising her eyebrows indicatively.  Yet another bargain struck without any real negotiation options available.

            “…yes,” Scott gulped, answering both Maggie and Ella simultaneously.

            “When?”

            “When?” Scott repeated, glancing at his sister with enough of a knot in his stomach to hold back a tidal wave.

            Maggie puckered her lips and blew him a silent smooch before smirking wide enough to fit a couple of golf balls between her lips, then after thinking for a moment, emphatically mouthed the word “Wednesday” and flashed three fingers twice on her free hand.

            Of course.  Almost too dumbfounded to believe a legitimate answer was being bestowed upon him, Scott realized that Judy had mentioned she’d be out again at this time for several hours in the evening after the afternoon garden party was over.

            Could this actually be happening?

            “Six… on Wednesday?” Scott peeped anxiously.

            “Okay.  That would be… great.  And honestly, Scott,” Ella continued hesitantly.  “I do really want to see you.”

            “I want to see you, too, Ella,” Scott promised, assured despite the biting feeling in his gut that he had made the right choice, and swallowed.  “It was… good to hear your voice.”

            “You too, Scott.  See you soon.”

            The call-ending tone droned with crippling conclusiveness.  Even if the call had gone on for an hour, it wouldn’t have been enough for Scott.

            “Cool.  Then we’re… good to go,” Maggie said with a nod, her voice less mocking than before.  Tapping the screen off the call app and sliding it into her pocket, she plucked Scott from between her toes with a thumb and forefinger before swinging her legs out over the bed’s edge and placing her feet back on the carpet to stand.  As she rose up, she lowered her thumb, still with her brother slung like a piece of dead meat across the swirled pad, into the opposite hand and allowed him to pull himself into his usual protective fetal position.

            “Good to go,” Scott repeated under his breath, too quietly for his goddess-sized sibling to make it out, as he settled his cheek comfortably against the fleshy terrain.  He held his breath, awaiting the inevitable pay-off for the deal he’d just struck, and feeling defiantly confident in the correctness of his choice.

            But it didn’t come.  No fingers began probing into his clothes to strip him down, and no hot fog descended on him as he was lurched onto Maggie’s maelstrom-swirling tongue.

            Why?  Even without looking up, he could feel the weight of her unblinking baby blues locked on him, still searching, as always, for something in his feeble frame that she never seemed to find, but somehow, it didn’t pierce as deeply as normal.  The foreboding of a thousand oncoming humiliations wasn’t clenching its tendrils around his heart, though logic dictated that it must’ve still been present.  A minute passed in silence as the siblings remained frozen in the startling quietude.

            “Well?” Scott groaned resignedly.

            “What?”

            “Aren’t I going back in?”

            “Well, sometime, probably,” Maggie shrugged.  “I don’t really feel like it now.  Plus, Mom will be back any minute.”

            Scott actually flinched at this break in the fabric of his personal reality.

            She didn’t “feel” like it now.

            Bullshit.  It had to be.

            This was Maggie.

            “Anyways, just cuz we’re postponing the super-fun stuff doesn’t mean I still can’t figure out something else fun for us right now,” she commented happily as she gazed down at the balled up subject in her creased palm.  Her eyes widened after a moment of thought.

            This was it now.  Here it was.  Scott found himself almost breathing a sigh of relief to find himself returning to familiar territory.

            “I know what!  There’s a Gossip Girl marathon this week on the old movies channel, and a new one’s starting in like ten minutes.  I bet if we went down now, we could easily get in like five episodes before bedtime,” Maggie stated confidently, striding purposefully for the door.

            “Oh.  Okay,” Scott mumbled with a frown, too surprised at the staggering mildness of this decree and holding his breath for the inevitable drop of the other metaphorical shoe.

            Minutes later, as Maggie slumped down into the couch of the empty living room and flipped on her antiquated teen drama, still with her inch-tall brother perched unmolested in her palm as her eyes were glued to the overacted on-goings, Scott couldn’t help but feel startled for the second time by the actions of his titanic sibling.

            Considering that this day had begun with him being put on duty in the mouths of both his mother and sister, the place he’d found himself at the end of it wasn’t altogether bad.  Even, if he dared allow himself a flash of foolish optimism, a positive one.

Scott straightened the collar of his dress shirt as he leaned against the kitchen door frame, ensuring all the buttons were still in place before patting out the barely-noticeable wrinkles of his slacks.  Though he’d only been under his house arrest for just over a month now, it felt like he hadn’t had the chance to wear anything other than t-shirts and shorts, or just his bare skin, for years.  Somehow, despite the knowledge that his current garments could be stripped from him just as easily as any of his normal doll-sized ensembles, it felt oddly empowering in the smallest way possible to be able to wear something this nice.        

            With a start, he realized he was experiencing something he hadn’t felt for some time, either, in the smallest of glimmers: confidence.

            Specifically, just enough to know that he might make it through this day in one piece and achieve another relatively novel sensation this very evening if he played all his cards right.

            Happiness.

            Wednesday had arrived at an absolute crawl, even though it was only two days away from his hard-won and emotionally expensive phone call with Ella.  Now that it was a half hour to twelve, with the financier prospects and potential political hard-hitters for Judy’s senatorial campaign set to arrive very soon at the museum gardens rented for the afternoon, he simply had to bite his lip and endure this final slog before he could have that chance.

            Judy was putting the final touches on her make-up upstairs before everyone could head off to the event together.  All things considered, Scott was grateful that his weekly outing would be at a foot tall and in full fresh air.  There were certainly worse ways to spend these mini-vacations from his servitude, most of which he had personally experienced.

            “You look like somebody’s ventriloquist dummy,” Maggie snorted down at her twelve-inch sibling as she and Kyle came around the corner, both decked out as well in their Sunday best for the event.

            “Thanks, Maggie,” Scott mumbled without missing a beat, too focused on his upcoming evening to be bothered by this or even anything legitimately seething his sister could concoct.  He wrung his hands around the end of his tie nervously.

            “Doesn’t he?” she chortled to her younger brother, who stood at a solid half a foot taller than her.

            Rubbing a knuckle against one of the lenses of his glasses, Kyle crouched down closer to the ground and squinted at Scott.

            “Your tie is screwed up,” he commented dryly with the experience of someone who had spent far more time in formal wear than his party-hard brother before standing back to full height and marching for the door leading outside.  “Try looping over the top instead.”

            “Yeah.  Uh, thanks,” Scott uttered it embarrassment, locking his eyes downward as he fumbled awkwardly to undo the tie and address the issue.  The room fell silent until Maggie took a step forward, ensuring the tips of her polished white heels were fully in her brother’s limited field of vision.  She tapped her shoe lightly in a rhythm against the hardwood.

            “Poor, poor little boy.  Can’t even put his doll clothes on right.”

            “I’m learning.”

            “Mhmm.  Sure you are,” Maggie remarked quietly before miraculously backing off again and heading for the garage, the chunky heels of her shoes clacking against the floor.  “Don’t take too long, or somebody’s going to want to redo the whole thing for you, just to make sure it’s done right.”

            Trying not to shudder as the garage door slammed shut behind the middle Stevens child, Scott realized he had made the same mistake as before with the tie and set about grumblingly starting over.

            That was when the door creaked again, less than a minute after it had closed.

            “I can get it.  I really can get it,” he called out hopefully.

            “You can say that again,” laughed the voice of Nancy Dugan in a throaty drawl as she sauntered into the room on her improbably high heels, constricted toes peeping out at the tips of the shoes that were each adorned with a tiny pink bow.

            Scott’s stomach lurched into his throat.

            “H-Hi, Mrs. Du-”

            “Remember what we talked about last time?”

            “Nancy,” he restated immediately.  “Sorry.”

            “Whatcha doing down there?” she pressed curiously.  “Waiting for your mommy to come back and pick you up in your fancy big-boy clothes?”

            “M-Mom said she wanted to check on my outfit before I get in the car,” Scott answered, willing himself to get control of his speech before the stammer got worse, though already his innards were filled with the fluttering of a thousand anxious moths.

            “And well she should, but I don’t think you’ll have a problem,” Nancy declared, and finally Scott allowed himself a glance up the dizzying expanse of her toned leg, past her taut suit, and up to her towering face far above as she loomed over him with hands decisively on her hips.  She winked.  “You look damn fine in that little toy get-up.”

            “Thanks.”

            “What do you think of mine?”

            “You mean…”

            “My outfit.  What do you think?  I just picked it up yesterday.  Personally, I think it says “professional,” but still not afraid to bite someone’s lip if they give me a good reason.  You know what I’m saying?” Nancy babbled enthusiastically, letting the tip of her tongue dance across her lower lip as she did.

            “I… um… I think it looks good!” Scott answered.  “V-Very nice.”

            “Well, not quite the reaction I was hoping for, but we can work with it,” the woman said with a deflated shrug.  “Not like the outfits really matter when they end up all crumpled up on a bedroom floor, anyway.”

            Scott was doing his very best to play along as neutrally as possible despite the kind of mounting discomfort that could practically put him in the hospital, but this was reaching a limit.

            What did she want with him?  Was she truly this out-of-her-mind desperate to make him hers?  This was a woman who could seduce twenty-five-year old guys who owned Porsches and have them crawling back to her for more.

            Was it simply because he couldn’t get away?  That she could toy with him however she pleased as long as she kept up only the paltriest of social etiquette around other people?  Was that all it took to make her this ravenous?

            Was she truly that sick?

            “Just a joke, little mister, lighten up,” Nancy chuckled with another wink.  “Let’s not fool ourselves here.  We both know that even if you were at full height, you still wouldn’t be able to handle all of me.”

            “I… I… l-look, Nancy…” Scott sputtered, not sure whether to feel more insulted or frightened.  “I’m… I’m still with my girlfriend.  Today I’m going to…”

            “You’re going to what today?”

            “Today I’m… going to draw the line.  That I’m staying loyal to her,” he corrected himself, reflecting on just how out of it he must’ve been to have so nearly let slip that he was going to see Ella this very day to the person who would probably take sexual joy in relaying that very information to Judy.

            “Nobody said I wanted to steal you away from her, Scott.  What kind of woman do you think I am?”

            Pondering this briefly, he resolved that there was literally no answer to this question that wouldn’t be the worst thing to possibly come out of his mouth.

            “T-Then you can understand why I don’t want to… um…”

            “Want to what?”

            “Mess around.”

            “Mess around,” Nancy repeated as a sly smirk crept over her maroon lips.  “You really think I’m the kind who messes around?  Believe me, when I start something, I go all in.  I do things intentionally and I don’t have regrets.”

            Wriggling her right foot around in its velvety spiked prison, Nancy kicked off her heel behind her and splayed her liberated toes, newly painted the same shade of auburn as her colored hair, against the floor with a soft squeak.  Then, tipping her big toe upward, she teased the digit against the crotch of Scott’s dress pants.

            “N-N-None?” Scott peeped, gulping and trying not to look down at the firm, exploratory toe that was already beginning to get a reaction somewhere deep inside him from the aggressive nudging.

            “None,” Nancy confirmed with a whisper, her eyes wide and wild.

            “I c… I c-can’t.  P-Please, Nancy.  Please,” Scott begged meekly.  He placed his hands on the doughy toe, nearly the size of his head, and tried to push it away, though this only resulted in Nancy applying more pressure between his legs until, with an oxygen-sapping gulp, he was pressed up against the doorframe by her foot.

            “Please-Nancy-please-what?” she inquired.  “How about we just leave that on its own without adding anything.  I like it better.”

            “This is w-wrong.  My M-Mom is coming downstairs in a s-second, she’ll…”

            “Uh-huh.  She’ll what?  What did your beloved mommy do the last time I had my toes on your delicate little cock and balls?” Nancy snickered, pressing a finger to her chin.  “I believe you were a bit smaller at the time, but unless I’m mistaken… just as I was giving you what I’m sure was the best orgasm of your entire life in the very same room, she was just finishing making a point about characterization as it relates to the historical period the book arose from.”

            Scott gulped, knowing this was perfectly accurate with regard to his mother’s former book club from a few years before, and returned no answer, save but a deep grunt as Nancy’s toe dug harder against his pants above his steadily rising member.

            “That’s what I thought,” she declared victoriously.  “Just look at you.  All I have to do is touch you now and you turn on like my favorite battery-operated aid.”

            Trembling harder at this comparison, Scott bit his lips, fighting the urge to recognize the minute pleasure he was experiencing from this exchange, which, despite all the discomfort, embarrassment, and precariousness of the location, was still among the only remotely libido-serving action he’d seen in a month.

            At last relinquishing the pressure on his crotch by pulling her foot back, Nancy set it on the ground with a fleshy slap and leaned over until she could speak in a gentle murmur and still be heard clearly, her hands now perched on her knees.  Scott breathed a sigh of relief, but was also dismayed to find himself physically exasperated by the ceasing of this rather crude game.

            “You act like I’m stringing you upside down over a bed of nails, Scott.  I can’t believe you wouldn’t want someone like me on your side when, the rest of the time, your sister is putting you in doll dresses and blowing it all over her social media.”

            “I…”

            “Listen, I know you’re just so certain your girlfriend hasn’t moved on yet,” Nancy reported, as though the word was made up.  “So think of this as me just keeping you warm enough to still function once you do meet up again.  You wouldn’t want to disappoint her, would you?”

            “N-N-No…” Scott answered against his better judgment, too petrified to think it through.

            “Here’s the thing, and it’s very simple: I like what’s under that pretty little suit of yours.  I want to play with it.  And I always…” Nancy breathed.  “…get what I want.”

            With that, both her hands whipped away from her legs, fingers curled into fleshy claws, and snatched Scott up around the sides like a ragdoll before he had an instant to consider rolling out of the way.

            She rose back to full height, momentarily gripping Scott parallel with her stomach, and then squeezed him against it through the silky fabric of her suit so he had to look up at her triumphant face between the valley of her chest.

            “And the sooner you admit to yourself that you want me to play with you, too, then the better it’ll be for everyone.  After all, it doesn’t have to be all about me,” the woman slurred with yet another wink.

            Clasping Scott more firmly against her stomach, she dragged him up the length of her shirt closer to her face, careful to put extra attention into rubbing his crotch against her right breast before pulling him away and letting him hover just in front of her face.

            Though he was four inches taller since the last time he was in her presence, he was still just as powerless, and Scott could already tell she had won: game, set, and match.

            “The party is in t-twenty minutes… we h-h-have to leave soon, how are…” Scott uttered weakly, becoming putty in the woman’s firm hands, unsure whether he wanted to cry or moan from the sensation now pulsing inside.

            “Trust me, little mister,” she giggled, digging her thumb into Scott’s pants so that his shirt came untucked.  “I’m very efficient.”

“Nance?  Was that your voice I heard?” Judy called from upstairs down to the kitchen where a foot-tall Scott was currently having his tiny shirt tantalizingly unbuttoned by the polished fingers of his mother’s best friend.

            Closing her eyes and furrowing her brow with frustration at this interruption, Nancy shrugged and gave Scott another wink as she finished undoing his shirt, revealing his chest and stomach, which she began to stroke tenderly with her fingertips.

            Scott tried not to sigh with pleasure at this act, doing his best to ignore the full tent he was sporting between his legs.  Still, it was hard not to at least savor the sensation of the woman’s practiced digits drawing circles on his chest with just enough pressure to let him know she was in full control without causing the slightest physical discomfort.

            God, she was good.

            Why was she so good?

            “You bet, sister,” Nancy called out at length as her eyes darted to the hallway, obviously at least weighing the possibility of dashing into the bathroom to finish what she’d started and feigning like she hadn’t heard the call.  Still, her fingers continued their game.  Scott flopped over in her grip as her palm supported the small of his back while her other hand carried on with the tinkering.

            “Oh, great!  Can’t wait to hear what you think of the look,” Judy shouted out.

            “I’m sure it’s gonna be great.  Remember I helped pick it out?”

            “I know, but you can’t be sure until you actually see it on me,” Judy called loudly again as her footsteps sounded on the upper floor.  “By the way, have you seen Scott around?”

            “Scott?  Yes, I suppose I have,” Nancy chuckled with a tilt of her head.

            Scott flinched as the woman brought him in closer to her face, wondering after the very-real possibility that she’d insert his head between her lips like a lollipop, but instead found her lips perching coquettishly against his right ear in order to speak.

            “Guess you’re off the hook for right now.  Don’t plan on going too far once we get back.  We’ll find a quiet little place and I’ll show you why I’d make such a good friend for you,” Nancy breathed delicately, her moist, moving lips tickling Scott’s ear with every syllable.  The tip of her tongue slithered out of her mouth again and licked at the rim of the young man’s ear, sending another sensuous tremor through his exceptionally deprived body.  “Don’t forget.”

            Scott nodded grimly as the woman’s lips finally left the side of his head so she could examine him in full again, and he noticed her eyes drawing lustfully to his abs again.

            “Like you ever could…” she added.

            “Hey, Nance!” Judy welcomed brightly as she headed into the kitchen, already proudly modeling her crisp new suit that hugged her curves modestly while also paying her a compliment with every step.  The fabric held just enough faint violet to hint at something coy in her intent, but with how she held herself and marched in her heels without the slightest misstep, it was clear she was leaving herself wide open, as if daring someone to challenge her and her authority.

            Gulping, Scott knew it would never, ever be him.

            Judy’s eyes fell to her son, and Scott could tell she recognized the situation immediately, but in her usual manner, swept it under the rug with a humorous grin at her friend and a simple shake of the head.

            “Scott was having a problem with his shirt.  One of the buttons was off.   I just wanted to make sure he looks his best,” Nancy explained rather convincingly.  “Every detail counts, after all.”

            “Thanks so much.  I’m sure Scott could use the refresher.  He hasn’t exactly had to look his best in a while,” Judy admitted.  “I can take it from here, though, if you want to head over to the museum and make sure things are still looking as good as they were this morning.”

            “Will do, boss,” Nancy answered jokingly, handing the partially disrobed young man over to his mother with his shirt now hanging around his arms.  Judy accepted her doll-sized son with a smile and instantly transferred him into a cradled position against her chest more suited to an infant.

            Nancy shot Scott another glance, wherein her eyes seemed to glow for just a moment as her pupils dilated in a flash, and then she was turned around again and power-walking toward the door.

            “You do look very handsome, honey,” Judy commented to her son as she strode across the room toward the kitchen table once Nancy was out the door.  “Maybe we’ll occasionally have to have you dress up for us and show off while you work.  It’d be a shame to have this outfit go to waste after today.”

            “Y-Yeah, maybe,” Scott agreed with an uneasy chuckle, actually not at all opposed to such an idea due to the infinitesimal increase in confidence he felt while in the formal wear.  He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something in his mother’s soft tone bothered him. Maybe it was because she’d been carrying on this sugar-sweet façade for five days straight and he still wasn’t used to it, but right now, in particular, was a sticking point.

            Judy took a seat in a kitchen chair and lowered Scott onto her thighs so that he could more or less stand up on the terrain of her pants with help from her gargantuan thumbs.

            “I’m actually glad we have this time together before we head out,” Judy remarked as she set about dexterously re-buttoning her son’s shirt with the tips of her fingers.  “It’ll give us a chance to make sure we’re on the same wavelength.”

            “Okay,” Scott said.

            “First,” Judy continued, clearing her throat.  “I want you to know that I recognize how things have been for you here at home for the last month.  I know it hasn’t been easy, and I know you must feel angry at some of the ways you’ve been treated, particularly when your sister and I…”

            Scott had to clamp his teeth together to keep his jaw from dropping at the mere legitimate broaching of this elephant in the room.

            “…well, you know.  When we have our fun,” Judy said casually.  “I’m not blind.  There are certain things that you do, or… that happen to you here that aren’t always… fair.  To you.  I know you act a certain way to keep the peace, and I want you to know I appreciate it.  I think it shows some real maturity, and is the main reason why I have no-doubt you’ll receive a very positive review next spring at your first board review.”

            “T-Thanks,” Scott uttered, trying not to turn the word into a question.

            “So having said that, I wanted to remind you how important today is to me,” Judy said with a sigh, seemingly shifting gears.  “And I… would hope that you would show the people there today the same decorum, especially, that I see you’ve been working so hard to cultivate…”

            “Of course, Mom.”

            “…no matter,” she continued, cutting him off and drawing a breath.  “No matter what may happen that… may upset you in any way.  Because in the end, you know that I care first and foremost about ensuring you and all others who’ve made mistakes have the chance to learn from the past and become the very best you can be.”

            Unsettled somewhat by this declaration, Scott was fairly certain he could handle just about anything after he’d been photographed forcibly cross-dressing by his sister for all her Instagram friends to see before Nancy mercifully mopped that potential mess up.  In fact, what made him the most uncomfortable wasn’t his mother’s caveat, but simply the fact that he hadn’t really heard a real downside yet.

            The other shoe was going to drop soon.  He knew it.  He just knew it.

            And it was probably going to level a city block when it did.

            “I do know that,” Scott answered dutifully.

            “Thank you for saying that, sweetie,” Judy cooed as she finished buttoning up her son’s shirt.  Her fingers went to work on the tiny fly so that his shirt could be re-tucked, but he quickly took over at the realization that his mother was undoing his pants.

            “And… just so you know… like I said, I know things haven’t been exactly very easy here, even though you’re supposed to be learning a lesson.  So I just thought I should say, if you’re really willing to go out there with your family and show me that you’re you’ll stand by me in my mission here, well…” Judy said, her voice actually increasing in confectionary delicacy.  “…let’s say that maybe, if there were ever times that you weren’t exactly following my rules to the letter, I might happen to just… look the other way.  I think that seems fair.”

            Scott froze up with his hands around his belt.

            “Understand, honey?” Judy questioned calmly, the chill of her old familiar tone returning for the briefest instant.

            “Yes.”

            “Yes, what?”

            “Yes, Mommy,” Scott hacked out without skipping a beat.

            “That’s my good boy,” Judy said warmly with a nod.  She leaned forward and planted a kiss on the top of her son’s head before wrapping her massive palms back around his sides and lifting him back into his previous position of being coddled against her chest.  “I’ve got the jacket you’re going to wear in my purse.  I didn’t want it to get wrinkled, and you’re going to look so much like a big boy in it.”

            “Thanks,” Scott answered as he snuggled absentmindedly into Judy’s shirt, more confused than ever, as his mother rose to her feet and walked toward the door.

“Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Worthington,” Judy said, grin plastered on her face, for what seemed like the four-hundredth time as she firmly shook the hand of yet another greying benefactor next to the podium in the grandiose environment of the museum gardens bursting with fragrant plant life, peppered with hors d'oeuvres-toting waiters and the miniature fountains Nancy had ended up providing.

            “It’s our company’s pleasure, and mine, too,” the man reported good-naturedly with a tip of his chin and a habitual adjustment to his expensive suit collar.  “Frankly, I’m not even sure why you had to throw us this little get-together.  You’ve already got this one in the bag.”

            “Ohhh, don’t jinx it,” Judy joked with a little feminine chuckle.  “But I do so appreciate the support.”

            Several yards away, next to a station holding pamphlets on Judy’s politics that Nancy had printed up the previous week, the Stevens children stood together in a courteous circle to great other passerby.  Scott stood on the table, which nearly put him at chest-height with Kyle, who was positioned next to it and Maggie, with carefully coached smiles from their mother on their faces as well.  In his earnesty to follow through on Judy’s promise, even Scott was putting his best welcoming foot forward.

            “Hello there,” a woman called out as she approached the trio of siblings, her brilliant red hair tied back in a tight bun and her green eyes positively glowing as she offered a hand to shake.

            She appeared considerably younger than most of the aging guests, looking even a few years less than Judy, and the mere sight of her both perplexed and unnerved Scott for reasons he couldn’t explain.  Her suit was certainly worth more than the Stevens’ family’s cars combined.

            “Hi!” Maggie chirped excitedly in unison with Kyle’s more reserved greeting, though Scott found himself unable to speak up as well.

            “You must be Judy’s children,” the woman responded, shaking Maggie’s hand and then Kyle’s.  “Pleasure to meet you.  My name is Emily Brookes.”

            Emily Brookes.  It couldn’t be that Emily Brookes.  Then that made her…
            “Wait, you’re…” Maggie gasped quietly with recognition, to which the woman responded with a knowing nod.  “Oh, wow.  It’s… so cool that you’re here.”

            “Well, thank you very much.  It’s good to be here, especially after all the time your mother has put into her work.  I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Emily said before her eyes turned to Scott.

            “Hello,” the twenty-one-year-old said belatedly to the current CEO of the Techilogic Corporation.

            “And you must be Scott,” she declared as though making a major discovery.  She extended a hand, with her index finger out, to shake with Scott, who accepted.  “You’re looking very dapper today, Mr. Stevens.  I hope it’s a sign of a continued improvement for you.”

            “Thank you.  And I… hope so too,” Scott responded robotically, off-put but careful to stay positive in the face of the person widely considered to be the nation’s most powerful woman.

            “Sorry if I sounded silly just now, I just… I admire you so much, and your work,” Maggie continued breathlessly in the brief silence, clearly having to put a lot of effort into holding back the hopeless fangirling for the sake of social graces.  “C-Could… could we talk while you’re here today?  I’d just love to hear about you and your job and… and…”

            “I appreciate it, hon, I really do.  Come find me later on and I’d be glad to let you pick my brain, though I’m afraid I’ve got a couple of things to go over with your mother now,” Emily said with genuine remorse, taking Maggie’s hands and giving them a squeeze of promise.  “Deal?”

            “Deal!” the sixteen-year-old said, still having to fight back the glee as Emily Brookes departed to speak with the newly available Judy.  She turned to Kyle and Scott, a goofy smile on her lips.  “Can you believe that she came?”

            “That… actually is kind of crazy,” Kyle admitted quietly.

            “I know!  She’s… she’s basically the one who decides which companies can keep existing in the whole country.  She’s just… so…” Maggie huffed.

            “…creeped out by you?” her younger brother commented dryly.

            Grimacing with embarrassment, Maggie gave him a half-hearted slap to the hip before anyone could see, then turned toward the table where Scott was still standing motionless.

            “Well?” she asked expectantly, crossing her arms as she glowered.

            “Yes?”

            “You…” she began with a frown, surveying his little suit, then sighed heavily.  “You actually look… okay in that.”

            “Thanks,” he responded.  “You too.”

            Half-smirking and giving her hair a cute little toss, Maggie leaned down closer to the table before whispering nonchalantly:  “You should keep it on for later so she can see you in it.”

            Taken aback at this heretofore unseen display of verbal generosity, Scott tried not to let it show in his face as his sister quickly turned back to her duty of acting as a distraction for guests before Judy was free to talk.  He glanced over where his mother had been standing with Emily Brookes, who was gone now and replaced with another benefactor.

            “It’s just about time for your mother to speak,” came the sultry voice of Nancy Dugan to the trio, suddenly next to the table and near enough to snatch Scott up, who simultaneously cringed and felt the onset of goose bumps as she ran her finger down the back of his leg.  “All of you feeling set to smile?”

            “We have been, Mrs. Dugan.  We’re all ready,” Maggie assured.

            “Excellent.  Keep it up.  I can see you three have been holding down the fort here,” Nancy said with an approving nod, then lowered her gaze to Scott.  “Would one of you go ahead and take your brother nearer to the podium so you can all stand together?”

            “Sure,” Scott’s sister volunteered immediately, scooping the young man up in her hands and cradling him at forearm’s length from her stomach as she and Kyle made their way to Judy.

            “Ready?  Here’s another copy of the cards, just in case,” Nancy whispered as she handed over the notes to Judy, who had politely waved away the last of the benefactors for the time being and stepped behind the podium as the crowd of wealthy political friends, numbering at nearly three hundred and scattered across the expansive landscape of flowers and fountains, all steadily turned to give their attention to Judy.

            “I’m ready as I’m going to be, Nance.  Thanks again,” Judy said confidently as Nancy positioned the Stevens offspring in what was evidently the most positive formation to stand, according to her campaign manager wisdom.  With Nancy’s instruction, Maggie awkwardly juggled her brother so that he could sit up with good posture while leaning against her curled arm.  Then, giving final glance at her kids and a twinkle in her eye, Judy shot Scott a stupefying look that told him to stay silent and still until further notice.

            “Good afternoon, everyone,” Judy boomed into the mic after twisting it on, instantly getting the attention of the remaining conversationalists out in the crowd of suits and scurrying wait staff.  “I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate your presence here today.  Though the conversation has been ongoing for a while, today I am officially announcing my bid for senatorial candidacy.  I won’t keep you long, because I want you to continue enjoying the sunshine, appetizers, and lilies instead of listening to a bunch of politics before the real work has even begun, but I do have something to say.”

            Scott clasped his hands together in his lap and tried not to uncomfortably shift as he reclined on his sister’s forearm.  He was already unavoidably captured by his mother’s powerful speaking voice, if only out of a diseased feeling of foreboding making its way through his body.

            “I’ve always had a strong stand on the revision of the American justice system.  I haven’t liked the state it’s in for some time any more than you have, and I’ve made quite a stir in getting it changed, the act of which you are probably familiar with under its legal nickname.  This will not be news to you, unless I’ve managed to lure you all here simply because I have a knack for talking your ears off,” Judy continued, a low murmur of approving laughter rumbling across the garden.  “But I’m not standing still.  The Shrink Act is young and will continue to show its already monumental potential for positive revolution only two months after its inception.  Today, though, to ensure that you know precisely the patriot you have chosen to stand behind with your generous gifts and political support, I would like to make a statement, loud and clear, so that my position and platform is well-understood from this day until I am sitting in Congress and beyond!”

            Some light applause came up, but the throng still held their breaths in anticipation.  Glancing around, Scott could see several news cameras set up that he hadn’t noted before.

            This thing really was getting a far reach.

            “Our prisons are filling up.  They’ve become a box to put away the part of society we don’t talk enough about and would prefer to forget, but it’s finally catching up to us as a nation.  And, I’ll be straight with you, because that is what you have come to expect from me: these places are only breeding grounds for the crime of tomorrow.  The robberies, murders, rapes, acts of terror of tomorrow.  You’ll find the research my associates and I have done will back this up.  What have we done, other than give those that would perpetrate these acts the tools and experience that would drive them to continue their efforts tenfold, should they be given another chance to act?”

            A murmuring of agreement buzzed through the crowd.

            “Make no mistake: those who occupy the prisons, on taxpayer dollars, no less, are the single greatest threat to our safety, not because of who they once were, but because they have not been handled correctly to not only make themselves safer, but safer for all citizens of this great nation.  That chance has been squandered.  Until today, that is.”

            The low roar continued, more enthusiastically now.  A few token hand claps sounded out.  Scott, somewhat bewildered now, looked up to find his mother’s hands descending rapidly on him and scooping him out of his sister’s arms.  For once, he found himself wanting to stay in Maggie’s grasp instead of being transferred literally anywhere else.  Judy lifted him up until he was standing next to the microphone on the podium and looking out at the crowd, his breath caught in his chest.

            Forcing himself to become momentarily frozen in this position, Scott folded his arms behind his back and stood as neutrally as possible.

            Think.  Of.  Ella.

            “I’m aware that my family has not exactly been the most positive on the ends of everyone’s tongues since the events of two months ago involving my son, Scott.  This is not something I shy from.  Rather, today my family and I stand here to show you what our country can look like if I am given the chance to make my ideas understood on rehabilitation and personal accountability,” Judy continued, clearing her throat and taking a sip from a glass of water handed to her by Nancy from behind.

            Puzzled, Scott refused to let it show on his face.

            Statue.  He had to be a statue.

            “Today, I am announcing my dedication to ensuring that, if I am elected, all criminals in the American justice system will face their societal dues under the Shrink Act, be it in house arrest, or in specially designed facilities where those reduced in size can have a real chance at reformation.  And further, those who go beyond merely breaking the law with their violence and contempt for all that is good will face even greater consequence, extending beyond their incarceration, for the safety of everyone.  I am absolutely committed to the belief that if we are willing to fight for that safety of every innocent man, woman, and child in these United States, now is the time to realize that we cannot sit idly by while those who would harm what is most precious to us continue to become even more hardened in some prison cell, with the means to do more damage than ever before.  We cannot allow them that chance; we must take it back before we have to bury another innocent.  This is our fight now, and we will not let those who have declared war on our way of life win,” Judy bellowed, her words like a stampede, her volume rising in time with the ascending intensity.

            By now, small cheers were coming up from across the garden.  Scott glanced in the direction of the four or five news cameras again, careful not to let his expression change, and saw the surprised and eager looks of their operators as they realized what a story this was turning into.

            This was turning into a catastrophe.  Like watching a car squelched in slow motion into a twisting flurry of metal shards, blood, and fire.

            And all Scott could do was stand there.

            “So this is my vow to you today,” Judy sighed with satisfaction into the mic.  “I cannot promise that I can save the justice system or preserve peace overnight, but I will give every breath I have to protecting and empowering America once again from those who threaten its safety…”

            Feeling incredibly hollowed and on the verge of shouting out at the universe, his mother, and every sad-sack out there who’d been suckered in to the continually mad machinations being spewed, Scott could feel Judy’s eyes on the back of his head, burning a hole through his skull with her gaze, and willing him to remain perfectly stoic.

            “…by putting them in their rightful place, below the true keepers of liberty and for the common good of all citizens, shrunken down safely and peaceably… on a permanent basis.”

            Scott felt a cold darkness wrap like a steel blanket around his silent, paralyzed form with so much weight he wasn’t even sure he could remain standing as the crowd of benefactors erupted in applause, with the news cameras zooming in on the family of three liberated human beings and one tiny empty shell of a person standing on the podium like a dust-coated doll.

            Scott laid like a marionette post-string-severing, strapped tightly into his rainbow car seat, which had been transferred over to Nancy’s vehicle so she could give the three Stevenses a ride home while Judy remained behind to speak with and be congratulated by the remaining stragglers of her political uprising.

            Kyle sat in the passenger seat, with Maggie on Scott’s right in the back, ignoring him completely.  Ordinarily, she would’ve been taking every chance to torment him at this kind of proximity while he was secured so firmly in a place he couldn’t fight back, though he couldn’t be sure if it was ironic manners in front of Nancy or if she truly just wasn’t in the mood.

            Bitterly, Scott knew that this truly was the one (and probably only first) occasion where just about anything his sister did to him right now would go completely unnoticed.  She could stuff him a sweaty sock, bathe him with her bare hands, or insert him against her back molars and suck the skin right off him.  It literally didn’t matter at this point.

            After having listened to his mother, on her now almost-assured ascent to power, prattle on for minutes about her intent to keep him along with every major criminal in the nation shrunken down at a manageable level for the rest of their natural lives, he couldn’t possibly contemplate an activity bad enough that he’d actually be forced out of his waking coma to take notice.

            The car was silent, except for the sugary pop songs rattling out from the Top 40 station Nancy had switched on.  Scott, head still hung low, chanced a glance over at his sister in her formal skirt as she tapped her right foot against the floor, though not in time with the music, as though suggesting she wasn’t present in the moment and just keeping her mind occupied with anything she could.

            Next, he looked up to the rearview mirror and caught Nancy’s right eye, which immediately winked at him before returning to the road.

            This, as well, meant nothing.  What did he care now?

            “You guys must just be so proud of your mom today,” the woman remarked, shaking her head with near disbelief.  “The woman can sure make a group take notice, can’t she?”

            “Yeah,” Maggie stated.  “Totally.”

            Despite hardly listening, Scott couldn’t help but feel he detected a hint of transparency in his sister’s answer, though it was nigh-impossible to tell given his gloom.  He couldn’t possibly have conceived of why she might’ve sounded like that, though, given that what presumably amounted to all of her wildest hopes and dreams had just come true.

            “They’re… definitely listening now,” Kyle observed quietly.

            “That’s an understatement,” Nancy agreed, conveniently skipping over hearing an opinion from Scott, who had a fair guess as to why.  “Of course, there’s going to be a long road ahead now for your mother and everyone else on this side of the fight, but… I think after the impression she made today, and especially if she won over the people that I think she did, it’ll be something that can be done.”

            “Uh-huh,” Maggie droned neutrally.

            “Plus, with Techilogic’s support… well, you know…” Nancy mumbled quietly before trailing off.

            Again briefly pulled from his sobering reverie by an insignificant logical abnormality, Scott realized that, although he hadn’t actually been with Maggie for every moment during the three-hour garden party, he’d been with her, or in her arms, for most of it, and after Judy’s little speech was over, she’d neglected to chase down Emily Brookes or even casually inch her way into a conversation, like she’d so enthusiastically promised earlier.  Of course, it was probably just embarrassment that had gotten to her.

            Shy, shy, little Maggie Stevens, unable to speak up about something that she cared greatly about.  Definitely just embarrassment.  Definite sense.

            Really?

            As the car pulled back into the driveway, Scott looked out the window at the approaching house and somehow felt it looked different.  He wasn’t sure whether it was the weariness that had settled in since his mother’s speech that was affecting his outlook, but it felt much more like looking at an eternity, encapsulated in simple brick and mortar.

            A void.

            But not one where he could escape to.

            One that was meant to hold him.

            “All right here we are,” Nancy announced needlessly.  “And listen, guys, I’m sure your mom will say this again later, but you did an excellent job out there, supporting her and her message.  I couldn’t be prouder.”

            “Thanks Mrs. Dugan,” Maggie answered, with something more or less resembling these words being mumbled by Kyle.  Scott watched as his sister hopped out of the car and then turned back around to undo the straps of his baby seat.  Miraculously, her hands weren’t lowering down on him in the shape of eager claws to snatch him up, but rather, approached him with odd normalcy, almost with the simplistic fervor of someone simply unstrapping a small child.

            Whatever was going on, Scott was far too out of it to even broach comprehension.

            “You don’t have to worry about him, Maggie,” Nancy said quickly just as the girl’s hands were placed on her brother’s chest.  “I have to get the seat unstrapped from my car anyway so we can put it back in your mom’s later.  You and Kyle can just head on in.  I’ll take care of your brother.”

            “Um, okay.  Sure,” Maggie shrugged, releasing her grip on the seat with bizarre ease.  Her gaze lingered blankly on Scott for a moment before she turned and sauntered up toward the house, with Kyle dragging his feet behind and still tapping away on his phone until both were inside and out of sight.

            Scott inhaled deeply in the momentary reprieve he had before Nancy was standing in the car door, arms stretched across the seats as though to demonstrate how difficult it would be to escape even if he wasn’t strapped in, her face positively beaming.

            “So,” she sighed.  “Where were we?”

            Hands pressed into the luxurious leather seats, Nancy leaned into the car until her face was right over Scott, her warm breath wafting stickily into his breathing space.

            “Well?”

            “Uh… w-we…” Scott mumbled, no longer out of pure fear, but simply a confusing mix of rapture and humiliation.

            “Shhh.  Don’t talk until you can get it together,” Nancy hushed, placing a slender finger over his lips.  “Maybe this will help get you relaxed.”

            Closing her eyes, the woman opened her mouth and extended her tongue, touching it to Scott’s cheek and sliding the slippery muscle up to his forehead.  Once she’d reached this point, she began planting kisses on his face and the top of his head with tenderness that shocked Scott more than if she’d gone into full-on slurping mode.  All the young man could do was shiver with bodily delight as he felt her hands on the straps freeing him from the rainbow prison and wrapping under his sides, scooping him from the seat and out of the car without missing a beat in smooching softly at his face.

            “Feeling into it yet?” she whispered as she hugged him to her chest and began walking up toward the house.

            Scott opened his mouth to speak, but found himself unable to come up with the right words as he experienced the feeling of having the side of his head caressed gently into the tight pillow of her left breast.  Between the draining experience of listening to his mother sell his freedom down the river a couple hours before, and now having whatever perverted misadventures Nancy had cooked up to look forward to, he couldn’t help but allow himself to slump limply against her as she strode toward the garage door, then passed it in favor of the cobblestone path leading to the backyard area.  Where was she going?

            “You didn’t think I’d do this in the house when your brother and sister are just in the other room, did you?” Nancy asked, as though reading his mind as she pushed the small gate open that led into the family’s fenced-in swimming pool area.  “A little privacy is nice.  Plus, you can be as loud as you want and nobody bothers you.”

            Momentarily unnerved that he was potentially about to be thrown under the water cover and into what might very well become a literal sexual cesspool, Scott watched groggily as Nancy marched around the side of the pool and instead made her way to the tiny brick poolhouse that sat a dozen feet from the edge.

            Despite only occasionally using it for pool parties, Judy had always insisted on thoroughly maintaining the little place, which amounted to little more than a room with a couch, a bathroom, and a closet for storing pool supplies.  And considering the number of hours Scott now had that could be freely dedicated to keeping the house beyond a merely sterile level of cleanliness, the small space that smelled faintly of chlorine and rubber shoes was incredibly appealing for the solitude it offered when he could manage to escape work for a few minutes, just for a much-needed moment alone.

            With a twist in his gut, Scott had a feeling that he no longer would be able to exclusively relate the poolhouse to a feeling of peace and quietude.

            “I think this’ll do nicely,” Nancy commented with a satisfied nod as she entered and shut the door firmly behind her.  She took a seat on the couch, though she still kept her twenty-one-year-old capture close to the chest.  “Don’t you?”

            Scott shrugged and tried not to sigh too loudly, unsure of what to feel, and even more unsure if it mattered in the slightest how he chose to feel.

            “Still not in the moment, hmm?” Nancy questioned with a quiet coo.  She stroked a thumb down the top of Scott’s head as she gazed down at him cradled to her person.  “That’s okay.  I understand how you must feel.  Like… the rug’s been pulled out from under you.  It must be very difficult.”

            Despite himself, Scott nodded.  Honesty at this point couldn’t hurt him more than it already had.

            “I thought so.  But you know what?  Right now, at this moment?  There’s not anything you, or I, or anybody else can do about that.  Right now, at this moment, we’re just a couple of… adults,” she continued, as though somewhat uncomfortable classifying the both of them under the same moniker.  “A couple of adults with a little quiet space to themselves, and a chance to feel really, really good.  So what do you think we should do about that?”

            Apparently, the question was mostly rhetorical, as Nancy’s fingers were already delicately undoing the zipper on Scott’s slacks and tugging his shirt out of the waistband.  Between two fingers, she grasped the tiny buckle and slipped it out of the loops before going to work on the buttons again.

            After she was halfway up the shirt, though, she paused and lifted Scott closer to her face, pressing her lips to his exposed abdominals again and puckering with just enough tickling gentleness to get an entranced twitch out of her subject, who laid his head back and groaned.

            “Okay, okay, so we’re starting to wake up again.  That’s a start,” Nancy whispered encouragingly, planting a final peck on his firm abdomen.  She pulled back again and finished unbuttoning the tiny shirt, tossing it to the side of the couch and wrapping her fingers seductively around Scott’s sides, exploring every inch of his torso, poking and prodding in the right places with that same tantalizing pressure that reminded him exactly who was in charge.  “Now let’s have a little fun.”

            Scott could hardly have said how he’d ended up in this particular position.  He glanced blearily to the side of the couch, and made note of the fact that his shirt, pants, shoes, and belt were already flung aside by Nancy’s nonchalant fingers.

            Then his gaze returned to those big amber eyes of a woman who put the word “cougar” to shame, hungrily looking him all over as she caressed him and tested the firmness of his chest and thighs.  At last, clacking her teeth together, she opened her mouth and bared her jaws at Scott’s waistband.

            He cringed at the sight of her oncoming incisors, his eyes bulging as she caught his underwear in her teeth and began tugging it down his body, over his crotch, past his knees, and off the ends of his feet until he was finally naked in her grasp.  She daintily spit the garment into the pile with the rest of his discarded twelve-inch ensemble.

            The pair made eye contact again now that he was fully exposed, Nancy’s irises animalistic and aglow, a half-smirk playing across her lips.  Scott was expecting things to be dragged out a little more at this point, but once again he was surprised when her fingers expertly snatched the tip of his now-steadily rising member between her thumb and index finger.

            “You’re definitely getting there, aren’t you?” she teased quietly.  She didn’t squeeze, but her grip on such a precarious position forced Scott to place his full attention on whatever she was doing, and he could feel her twiddling him between the pads of her fingers, experimentally deciding how much pressure she could apply.  Before he could look up again, then, her face was filling his vision and billowing her hot, intoxicating breath into his nostrils.

            “Open your mouth,” she ordered throatily, and Scott obliged, now running solely on autopilot, as wide as he could.  Pursing her plush lips together, then, Nancy pressed her mouth to his, at first as a light smooch before letting her tongue creep out of her lips and into Scott’s gaping maw.

            Not much of it could fit, and the tip alone absolutely filled his jaws with the writhing power and musculature of Nancy’s mouth, but it was more than enough to send her sensuous message.  Unavoidably, he sampled her warm saliva as it trickled down his throat and along his chin while she began to lightly moan at his taste as well.  Out of instinct, he bit into it and felt the thickness of it writhing against his teeth.

            Even in his haze, and even with all the humiliation and brokenness he felt for it, Scott wasn’t going to lie to himself about how spectacular it felt.

            Now growing more aggressive, Nancy’s lips widened and practically pulled the lower half of Scott’s head in, constricting his breathing every few seconds as she suckled against his cheeks and neck.  Her tongue lapped out again, coating his skin in a thin trail of her sticky froth, and made its way down to his chest, then to his stomach.  And it didn’t stop there.

            Scott gasped silently, the blood rushing from his head and limbs and rendering him a hanging piece of meat as Nancy’s tongue scooped up his hardened member.  Greedily, her lips closed around his entire package and set to work, swishing it in the broiling environment and twisting her red organ around its comparatively miniscule target.  She leaned back further against the back of the couch, upturning her head toward the ceiling and hoisting Scott above her as she sucked.

            And then Scott’s air froze in his chest.  He hacked desperately, somehow fighting his way back into a normal breathing pattern, and clenched his muscles up, tightening his fists and shuddering at the feeling of Nancy’s sweaty palms clasped against his stomach and legs to hold him steady.

            Ella.  She filled his mind, her face appearing even when he closed his eyes.  Her blonde tresses, her soft skin, her swimming blue eyes, her soothing voice.  Her gentle, steady hands.

            With a saliva-drenched pop, Nancy pulled Scott’s family jewels from between her lips and brought him back to face level, a look of surprise in her eyes and concernedly furrowed brow.

            “Scott.  You’re… you’re…” she mumbled, for once at a seeming loss for words.  Scott glanced downward to realize that his member, despite being clenched between the thirsty lips of one of the finest blowjob artists of the 21st century, had gone flaccid again.

            “Oh,” he mouthed, surprised himself, though fully aware of why it had happened.

            “You’re… really not going to play along with me?  You’re that determined?” Nancy pressed disbelievingly.

            “I’m sorry,” Scott uttered, not sure what he was apologizing for.  “But I said I can’t.  And…”

            “…you can’t,” Nancy repeated back contemptuously, at last lowering Scott toward the couch and setting him down next to her.  She nodded her head with aggressive finality and folded her hands in her lap.

            Scott, rather numbly, crossed his legs and wrapped his still-trembling fingers around his knees before cautiously looking up at the towering form of his failed lover.  It looked like he’d managed to disappoint his way right off the hook.

            “What the hell, then,” Nancy drawled with a truly uncaring shrug, throwing her hands in the air and slapping them back onto the couch cushion.  “At least one of us is going to have a good time.”

            This declaration jumpstarted Scott’s heart back into overdrive as he looked up with terrified urgency to see Nancy throwing her suit jacket against the back of the couch before immediately going to work on the buttons of her shirt, busting them apart with almost enough passion to rend them from the thread.  She kicked both heels to the ground with a hard clack.

            Gasping, Scott dove from the couch and darted toward the door, springing for the doggy door Judy had installed.  His hand pressed into the panel and pressed, just as a force like a car fender smacked into his stomach and send him collapsing onto his side, wheezing for respite.

            Nancy, now just in her bra and pants, placed her bare foot back on the ground with a cold slap, satisfied with the power of her little kick.  Taking another step closer to Scott, who had curled into the fetal position to catch his robbed breath, she tapped his shoulder with a dexterous big toe and forced him onto his back again, gazing up at her glowering form.

            “Now look here, sweetie,” she simpered through a venomous grin.  “I’ve given you a lot of chances.  I’ve dragged this out a long way to make you comfortable.  I’ve been patient.  But even I’ve got my limits.”

            Scott coughed, clenching his eyes shut.

            “I said look at me,” Nancy ordered bluntly, tapping her toe back into Scott’s stomach.  “You will look at me, little man.”

            Meekly, Scott forced himself to look back up at the looming middle-aged figure, her body toned and smooth despite its years, her manicured fingers clasped around her shapely hips.  Rising back up again, her foot filled his field of vision, her rosy wrinkled sole speckled with flecks of dirt and fuzz from the interior of her shoe, her heel dry and weighty as it arched.  Her toes flexed and curled above his face before the entire meaty appendage lowered itself onto his body.  Nancy’s heel settled comfortably onto Scott’s deflated member, threatening to crush it with only a little added pressure as revenge.

            “After all these years of your mom putting you in your place.  After all this time of you being… afraid of what your own little sister can do to you,” Nancy droned, chuckling at this last phrase.  “After I had to do that work to ensure your public humiliations didn’t spread too far, you still don’t understand how anything works, do you?”

            The woman’s long toes splayed themselves, tapping aggressively against Scott’s face and causing him to flinch as he gasped for air under the weight of the ball of her foot caving down against his chest.  Every shallow breath was filled with their steamy, shoe-cooped stench.

            “Here’s the scoop, honey: you’re not going anywhere.  This is just the way things are moving now, and maybe you weren’t listening closely enough to the sound of all that cheering, but it’s not stopping anytime soon.  After everything you’ve done, your ass belongs to everyone else until the message sinks in deep enough to replay in all your dreams.  You belong to your mom, to your sister, to your brother, to that woman you hit…” she continued.  “And now, to me.”

            Choking back exasperated tears, Scott shook his head grimly while uselessly trying to shield his face from Nancy’s bucking toes with his fists.

            “Go on,” she encouraged, still with the false sweetness he had come to recognize in his own mother’s tone so frequently.  “Give it a lick.”

            “What?” he uttered, too surprised to do the sensible thing and comply without delay.

            “You heard me,” Nancy hissed.  “Lick my toe, the one that’s over your face right now.  From top to bottom like you mean it.  I’m taking charge of your reeducation now, and this is the introductory lesson.”

            Her second toe hovered ominously over Scott’s head, the oily toeprint in its endless loops like a death sentence written in a foreign language and being presented to him.  Suddenly it descended, flattening against his face, as thick as his neck.  The oppressively smelly flesh seemed to fold over his every breathing orifice and pump his lungs full of its sour pungency.

            “So help me God, Scott, you will stick out your little tongue this instant and lick my toe or you will never know what it feels like to be safe ever again,” Nancy spat hungrily, her voice cracking with aggression.

            Scott swallowed, intending to dispose of the last of his pride, only to discover with little surprise that it had apparently been long gone.  And so, running low on air, he opened his lips with difficulty against the pressure of Nancy’s toe pounding on his mouth and lapped at the rippled print.

            Again and again, aggressively sampling the doughy skin as it was compressed harder against his mouth.  Salty flavors, repugnant beyond imagining, forced their way down his throat with every lick.  Every drop of fleshy oil ingrained in the woman’s skin cells seemed to draw forth as he dryly fought to keep his face from cringing too hard to continue.  He thought he’d experienced the worst sensory prison just by being trapped in shoes before, but he was sadly mistaken.  Scott could practically feel the horror of the tang melding permanently with his memory.

            “Good,” Nancy commented nonchalantly, clearly not terribly impressed but at least sated.  “Next time, you’ll act a little faster when I tell you to do something.  Or we’ll just have to find a more convenient place to keep you.”

            At last relinquishing pressure from Scott’s head, Nancy’s foot lifted off his sore frame and hovered above him and retreated with a final scrunch of her toes.

            “Now stand up,” she ordered softly.

            Scott, still trembling from the surprise of being kicked, bolted to his feet so quickly he almost fell over, but managed to keep his balance.  He looked up before he had to be asked just in time to see Nancy’s palms descending toward him and scooping him up around the chest, pressing hard inward with her thumbs.

            Carrying etiquette was apparently a privilege he’d also lost now.

            Hoisted up until he was level with Nancy’s chest, which by now was bursting out from her unbuttoned shirt in a black bra far too fancy for the semi-formal events of the afternoon, Scott struggled to catch his breath.  He could tell she’d already undone the strap.

            “Take it off,” she hissed.

            His hands shaking, Scott gave the center strap a tug, allowing it to slide away from Nancy’s newly liberated breasts.

            “That’s it.  Now have a little taste of this, too,” she whispered.  Tightening her grip around Scott’s shoulders and arms with one hand, she heaved him against her left breast hard enough that it almost gave him whiplash.  Pressing a thumb against the back of Scott’s head, then, she forced his lips against her rapidly hardening nipple.

            “Open your mouth again, little man,” she harped with businesslike efficiency.

            At last allowing a couple tears to fill his eyes, Scott forced the woman’s nipple into his mouth and went to work, feeling emptier with each pull.

            It wasn’t the act itself; after all, he’d spent entire afternoons before getting pummeled like prizefighter fodder under his sister’s toes.  Chewing on a horny cougar’s breast was nothing.

            It was what it all meant.

            For him, and for those who had made mistakes anywhere in the country.  More and more, it was becoming conceivable that this could be life.  His life, or what remained of it.

            And if Judy had her way, there would be no end in sight.

            It hardly registered as Scott felt himself being plucked away from sucking duty and lowered back down onto the couch cushion between Nancy’s legs as she set about yanking her panties down her legs and around her ankles, still with one hand firmly clasped against his heaving chest.

            She mouthed something, even winked at him, but it was all silent in Scott’s ears as he stared at the freshly shaved, vibrantly pulsing love tunnel between Nancy’s legs.  He was conscious that she was pinching his hand between her fingertips, forcing him to make it into a fist, and then guiding it forward.  Forward, until his fist was pressing through the flowery layers of skin, slicked with encroaching pre-ejaculate, deeper into the slimy hovel of Nancy’s pussy.

            He could hear her moan as his fingers grazed by vibrating walls, but it was distant, as though from across the neighborhood or in a dream, and every second he had to remember what was happening, so detached had he become from his body as the tears flowed freely from his eyes now.

            It wasn’t like he had to do any of the work, as Nancy’s tight fingertips gripped him at the shoulder and worked in and out, steadily at first but with enough force and velocity by the end to give him tennis elbow as she masturbated herself with Scott’s limp limb.

            The heel of her hand caved down against the back of his head, gently but with clear intent as she pressed the side of his face against the curved ridge at the entrance to her lips.

            Trapped in the new void of his own powerlessness, both as a fragile human being and as the intended poster boy of his mother’s madness, Scott huffed meekly at the influx of feminine acidity and a token whiff of some perfumed lubricant Nancy must have smeared on earlier in preparation for this act.  His head was sandwiched between a wall of Nancy’s thrusting palm flesh and the pulsing pink maw his arm was being swallowed into.

            By now, his entire arm was inside her, and the woman’s whole body was bucking down against the couch cushion and into Scott’s torso, and each bounce produced another tiny gush of fluid that clung to Scott’s body and burned in his eyes, forcing more tears of anguish and stinging down his cheeks.

            With a final plunge that managed to consume Scott’s head as well as his shoulder into her vulva for one heart-stopping instant, Nancy grunted with ultimate fulfillment and at last released the pressure her squeezing fist was exerting in a final orgasmic spray.  It took Scott an awkward thirty seconds to work his way steadily backwards and snake his head and arm of the slimy darkness without twisting something, and obviously his companion wasn’t going to offer any assistance as she rode out the last wave of enjoyment his struggling provided.  His matted hair, soaked with Nancy’s ejaculate, hung over his eyes.

            He was back in the void, the escape from reality he thought he’d been fighting for all this month.

            But it was all a cruel redundancy.  There wasn’t even a reality to escape from now.

            Leaning his head with defeat against Nancy’s vaginal lips, Scott sniffled, no longer caring who saw him weep as the woman’s breathing gradually descended back to normal, her thumb tracing lovingly in circles on his back.

            “Scott?”

            The broken shell of a twenty-one-year old was still slumped on the couch, Nancy’s dried ejaculate painting his nude twelve-inch body in a gooey film.  He had been abandoned here by his rapist at least thirty minutes before and now was simply drinking in the hollowing sensation of nonbeing he had been piteously swimming through since Judy’s speech ended that afternoon.

            “Scott,” the voice repeated softly.

            At last acknowledging his name, the young man lurched his head upward to see his sister standing above him, having changed back into a more casual shirt and jean shorts.  Ordinarily, he would’ve expected to see her with her arms crossed expectantly and a foot slapping against the floor, or her hands clasped to her hips while she thought up something to accuse him of.

            But she was just standing there, her arms at her sides, and her mouth hanging open a little as her brow furrowed.

            “Yeah?” came the automatic response from Scott’s throat, and the sound of it startled him.

            “You’re, um…” she began, then cut herself off, exhaling audibly.  “Nancy’s… gone now.”

            “Okay.”

            There was silence for a moment.  At last conscious enough to consider his future at least ten seconds in advance, Scott began to wonder if he even had the willpower to start moving his limbs, as almost assuredly, Maggie would take issue with the fact that he was currently sitting at his maximum allowable height.

            Almost as big an issue as the fact that he wasn’t yet at her absolute beck and call.

            Confused that he wasn’t yet feeling the familiar chill and green flash in his eyes, Scott chanced another glance upward, and was startled again to find Maggie lowering herself to her knees on the floor in front of the couch so that her eyes were only a matter of inches higher than Scott’s.

            As deep as his wallowing reverie was now, at this proximity, even the drunkenly forlorn Scott was able to see it.  There was something in Maggie’s ice-water irises as her pupils darted back and forth over his face, studying with dumbfounded effort, while a frown of puzzlement permanently etched itself into her forehead.  Her lips turned a pale white, pursing tightly together, and her nostrils flared several times in quick succession.  A few stray golden hairs fluttered over her eyes, something she normally would’ve brushed aside instantly out of annoyance, but she let them hang as if she hadn’t noticed them.

            Whatever thoughts were inside her head right now didn’t amount to the glowering glee he’d come to know so well, nor even swelling irritation at his lack of action in her presence.  She was intensely focused in a useless attempt to maintain her steely composure, clearly unsure of herself for once, like a stage actress who’d suddenly experienced amnesia mid-performance, and it was almost like looking at the face of a different person.

            Maggie’s nose wrinkled then, her upper lip curling at the corner, and Scott realized it was probably from the stale stench cast by the gummy fluids currently lubricating his head and shoulders.  Still, that peculiar look in her eyes didn’t change.

            “Mom won’t be back until seven tonight,” Maggie uttered, clearly confident in the fact itself but for some reason hesitant in stating it.

            “Okay.”

            “Ella will be here in a couple hours now.”

            “Thanks,” Scott droned.  His answers came as neutrally as he’d ever heard himself speak, like they were spat from the cold womb of a teleprompter.

            Another silence followed.

            “What did she do?” the phrase came at last, delivered more easily now that Maggie at last summoned the gusto to speak it aloud.  It came less as a question and more a proffered confirmation, as she clearly already had a guess.

            Scott cringed, then shrugged lightly to himself.

            What possible kind of shit did he give?

            “Stuck my head in,” he answered, glassy-eyed, as he gazed back up at Maggie’s stoic countenance.

            Maggie’s baby blues blinked, and her entire face seemed to shake.  She quickly adjusted her position on her knees to help pass it off as a byproduct of sudden motion, but it was visible nonetheless.

            “In… you mean, in her…” Maggie repeated, far too petrified by the mention of it to go forward without certainty.  Scott nodded.

            The sixteen-year-old’s frown twisted into a scowl.  She bit her lip, and her breathing seemed to enter an irregular pattern that set her into a series of nearly imperceptible quivers.  Her eyes widened with revulsion, and her mouth hung steadily as though her facial muscles had gone slack.

            “Are you going to get up?” she asked, somewhat groggily, as though she’d just woken from an extended sedation.

            “If I need to do something.”

            “What?”

            “If you’re going to ask me to do something, I’ll get up.”

            Maggie’s eyes narrowed now, devoid of their usual cloying maliciousness, and her eyelid twitched.

            “Why are you doing this?” she pressed.

            Scott sighed to himself, almost with relief at this apparent return to routine.  He knew Maggie couldn’t hang on this long without letting her usual self come back out.  This, at least, was familiar.

            “Doing what?” he asked.

            “You know what.”

            “Answering you?”

            “Yes.”

            “Isn’t that what you want?”

            “Well… yeah, it is.  But…” she mumbled, thrown right back out of her poise once again as she shook her head steadily from side to side in disbelief.  “You’re…”

            “What?”

            “You… were there for Mom’s thing, right?  You listened to it.”

            “Yes.”

            “And you get what she was saying, right?”

            “Yes.”

            “So why are you so…” Maggie continued, dropping off again as her hands appeared over the edge of the couch, her fingers clenched into the fabric of the cushions.  Her cheeks had flushed a rosy pink and her teeth were gritted, almost to the point of grinding.  She was practically trembling with an obvious cocktail of misdirected resentment, confusion, and even what Scott might have called fear if he’d allowed himself to imagine such an alien concept for his sister.  She couldn’t have looked more out of her element if she’d been placed naked on a podium before a thousand prying eyes.

            “Because it doesn’t matter,” Scott blurted with resolve, his voice cracking as his already-red eyes welled again, rawer than he’d ever been before her.  “This is all there is now.”

            If there was bewilderment in the girl’s eyes before, she now looked like she’d come face to face with a wailing daylight phantom as she instantly withdrew several inches from the edge of the couch, her eyes agape and looking like they could shriek.

            “Scott, don’t talk like that.  It’s really weirding me out.”

            “Okay,” he bitterly choked out as soon as Maggie had issued the uneasy command, clenching his lips together and bowing his head as the tears rolled freely down his cheeks again.  A few sputters of sobbing escaped his lips, and he didn’t bother to try and swallow them.  It wasn’t like there was anything he could do to hide it, nor a good reason to expend the effort.

            “No!  You’re… you’re not supposed to… to…” she spat with obvious desperation, slapping her hands back onto the surface of the couch again.  Her fingers slid along the cushy surface and rose up, latching around Scott’s arms as they sat limply at his sides.  The surprise contact caused him to start, but he didn’t make a sound or struggle as she bound his limbs in her fists, firmly but without squeezing.

            “Supposed to what?” he managed, sniffling as cold moisture trickled down the crook of his neck.

            “Come on.  Stop screwing around and do something!” Maggie demanded more loudly, leaning her face in closer until Scott could feel her warm, heightened breath on his chest, a few flecks of spittle landing on his cheeks.

            “What should I do?” came the distant reply.

            “What do you mean what should you do?  Get MAD!” she demanded with a growl as her breathing picked up faster.  Her tone was growing desperate, as though the seconds were ticking by before she lost her chance to relay this request, and her voice was cracking hard.  “Don’t you… don’t you understand, you stupid little… I… I mean… Mom said she doesn’t want you or anyone else like you to be big ever again!  Don’t get it?”

            “I know that.”

            “Quit it, now.  I’m telling you, you have to quit doing this, or I’m gonna… I’m gonna…” Maggie huffed with falsified aggression, clearly trying to fall back into her comfortable pattern of constant threats, but evidently at a loss for coming up with a substantial punishment as she glared as hard as she could at the ejaculate-slogged, slumped-over little remnant of a person before her who obviously wasn’t going to be impacted in the slightest by anything she conjured up.

            “I have quit.”

            “I said STOP!” Maggie screeched.  Her right hand released from around her brother’s arm and, flattening her fingers together, she slapped him across the cheek with her fingertips with more than enough force to instantly send him flopping down onto his side, his face flushed a stinging red from the cracking impact.

            In the same instant, Maggie yanked her arm back and retreated from over the cushion as though she was the one who’d been struck.  She wrapped her other hand around her fist, shaking at this point, and watched her foot-tall sibling lie on his side and slowly press a palm to his burning cheek, cringing as he did, but he didn’t look up at her, nor did he say anything.  Her lower lip quivered, but she couldn’t manage a response either.

            Scott chanced to open an eyelid, blinking up at his abusive sibling, and noticed a glistening in her eyes he couldn’t remember having seen since she was around seven years old.

            The heavy, emotional breathing of the two parties was now so palpable that it was the only thing filling the ears of both Scott and Maggie Stevens, and though the older offspring continued heaving mutedly into the surface of the cushion, the latter sibling by now looked far more distressed.

            “I… I’m…” she mumbled, expelling air heavily as she fought to produce the word.  “I’m s-”

            Before she could finish what sounded apocalyptically like the beginning of an apology, Maggie rose to her feet and darted over to the small adjoining bathroom used for changing into swimsuits.

            After hearing her rummage through a drawer and turn on the sink for a matter of seconds, Scott flinched at the sensation of his sister’s fingers curling under his arm, far more gently this time, to pull him back into a seated position.  He flinched again as a damp washcloth billowed around his shoulders and over his face, but with the ends pinched in her fingertips, Maggie only proceeded to scrub along Scott’s shoulders and chest, making quick work of the residue from Nancy’s games.

            Particular attention was paid as the tip of the warm cloth reached Scott’s reddened cheek where she’d slapped him, but its touch softened even more here, and as his sister’s palm cupped this opposite side to help keep him steady, he couldn’t help but sway a little as he settled into the calming sensation of the wet fabric.

            Once Maggie’s cloth had dabbed away the vast majority of the mess left by Nancy, his sister slid her fingers under his calves and against his back to help him to his feet.  By now, Scott’s crying had been relegated to the back of his throat, and all he could do was dry sob.

            “Stick your legs through,” Maggie whispered, stretching out Scott’s underwear near his ankles.  Confused and still wobbling, he nodded and stepped into them as the girl worked them up his legs and to their proper place.  With this done, she did the same for his pants and shirt.  Scott began to button it back up, but his vision had blurred and his fingers were still trembling so hard that he couldn’t grip the button well enough to slide it through.

            “Let go of it, Scott,” came the soft instruction, and he relented, allowing the practiced fingers of someone who’d spent her preschool days ensconced in a bedroom full of dolls to expertly slide the buttons back into place.  After, she fetched his shoes for him to slip back on.  Next came his jacket, and Maggie helped his arms find the correct holes in the fabric.  Finally, she looped the tie around his tiny collar, and rather than let him wrestle with it again, managed it herself.  Once everything was on, she pinched the lapels of the jacket between her thumbs and index fingers and set about straightening it.

            Scott gazed blankly at her face, which seemed to be pulled taut with the effort of avoiding all expression while she worked.  Her blue eyes seemed cloudy, like they were trying and failing to stare directly through him, and their moisture remained welled and glistening as though held back by brittle glass.

            “Why are you doing this?” Scott croaked, repeating his sister’s earlier question back to her.

            “I… want you to look nice for her,” Maggie responded, at last satisfied with her brother’s get-up, and nodded.  “This’ll be good.”

            Despite himself, Scott almost felt the urge to let loose the most sardonic cackle of his life.  He may have been buttoned back up into his doll-sized formal wear, but his hair was still matted back and his face was flushed from the tears, his eyes bloodshot enough to make him look strung out on several drugs simultaneously.

            He was a little puddle of wasted human refuse wrapped in shiny paper, and he knew it.

            “Shhh,” Maggie hushed, tapping a fingertip to Scott’s wet cheek as he coughed up the last lingering sobs, clearly sensing his concern.  “You’ll… be okay.  You just gotta calm down.  Just breathe a little.  Slow down.”

            Scott nodded, and actually began complying, inhaling slowly and then letting it out as Maggie continued to brush the tears off his skin.  As he did, he could hear her breathing pattern undergoing the same struggle.  The instruction obviously hadn’t just been meant for him.

            It hardly registered that this was the very same girl who, all within the last week, had stomped him into a blackout during her championship and blackmailed him into a hellish ride on her tongue.

            “I’m trying,” Scott said honestly, staring down at his shoes.

            “Okay,” Maggie said, seemingly accepting this with a deep sigh.  “Wanna sit inside ‘til Ella gets here?  Or do you just, um…”

            “I can go inside.”

            “Do you want a lift?”

            Frowning, Scott forced himself to look back up at his sister’s face, and had to do a double take, despite the fact that nothing had really changed in her still-expressionless countenance.  Rather than looking at the face of his sixteen-year-old younger sister, it felt more like looking at a picture of Maggie from an old photo album.

            He knew it was a ludicrous thing to decide, perhaps brought on by the shock of this conversation and his previous traumas, but for an instant, he could see his sister.  His real sister: calm and earnest, loose and uncaring of what others thought of her, unburdened with any of Judy’s longstanding indoctrinations that had rigorously trained her daughter to hate those who couldn’t fight back against her and absolutely relish her dominion over them with ravenous fervor, as though it would make her even stronger.

            A lifetime of Judy’s draconian emotional brainwashing, coiled like black tendrils around the girl’s heart and preventing any of its normal human functions, had been pulled back by just a few inches in this moment, and it was enough to see her.  Scott felt like he’d been slapped across the face again as he stared into the momentarily pure, cautious eyes of his sibling, her shell having been rattled and then cracked to let her potential self through.  All it had taken was something like this, something that not even Judy’s parenting could’ve hardened her so thoroughly against that she couldn’t be touched by basic human sympathy.

            In this moment, Scott understood better than he ever had before that he was not the only one who had been warped into emotional oblivion by a lifetime under the thumb of Judy Stevens.  His sister, and his brother as the bitterly detached island he had been molded into, were in the same oarless boat as Scott, and they couldn’t even see it.

            “Okay,” he answered at last.

            “Good,” she said, scooping Scott up and cradling him on her forearm like she had at the garden party, rather than squeezing him into a restrictive embrace as usual.  Without another word, she made her way to the door, nudged it open with her shoulder, and padded quietly across the concrete around the pool.

            And suddenly, amidst his defeatist turmoil from an afternoon of back-stabbings and totalitarian declarations, the twenty-one-year-old shrunken house prisoner realized he couldn’t give up just yet.  There was more still to be done, and probably far more to endure for it, but it didn’t matter now.  None of it did.

            His soul was no longer the only one on the line.

            Maggie’s thumb passed a final time over Scott’s cheek and brushed away the last round of his tears as she kicked the screen door into the house back open.

            “Well,” Ella whispered gently.  Her eyelashes batted anxiously in quick succession.  “I guess maybe we should talk.”

            “Yeah,” Scott sighed as he perched on both of her hands, his feet resting on her thighs as he gazed up at her face.  Her blonde tresses hung low and long enough that they occasionally brushed against his knee, and he desperately wanted to reach out and touch it, but he already felt on thinner ice than he cared to stand on.

            When his girlfriend had arrived at the door, Maggie had said hello, still in her stunted haze from earlier in the afternoon, and handed over her brother without another word and returned to her bedroom, giving the couple the freedom to find a quiet place to chat.

            Given how much this meeting had been built up in Scott’s head, in a cruelly miraculous twist, he found himself actually more nervous about leaving his sister’s hands and being transferred to his girlfriend’s.

            “I’m… sorry I took so long,” Ella said with a hesitant swallow as she leaned back in the living room couch that served as Scott’s bed.  “It’s just been…”

            “Tough,” Scott finished with an understanding nod, though he couldn’t bring himself to keep eye contact when he answered out of embarrassment.  Certainly she had tried to make contact before a lot of people he might’ve once called his closest friends.  “I get it, really.  You’re not the one who should be apologizing for anything.  But I’m sorry too.”

            “I know.”

            “How’ve you been?”

            Ella frowned, apparently surprised by the question.  “I’ve… been good?  I mean, besides everything that’s happened.”

            “Right.”

            “School didn’t even let out for us until a week ago.  Being home, though, it… it just made me think.  About a lot of things.  Made me reconsider them, I guess.”

            “Which is when you called,” Scott offered feebly.

            “Yes.  I… look, Scott, I… I do know… this wasn’t all your fault.”

            At this, the young man’s ears perked up a little, and he felt the urge to slap himself across the face to ensure he wasn’t just living out the insane mirror universe version of this conversation.

            “What do you… I mean, how?”

            “Because,” Ella shrugged, biting her lip.  “You’ve been getting things like this your whole life.  Your mom and your sister and… everybody they know.  They never gave you a break.”

            “Yeah.  But they weren’t the ones driving my car,” Scott guiltily groaned.  He forced himself to look her in the eye again.  “Me getting slapped around a lot when I was younger doesn’t answer for that.”

            “I know it doesn’t all the way, but… well, I guess I didn’t think this until a few days ago when I called.  I admit that.  But I think I’m starting to see it now.  You never really got a chance to understand for yourself what was wrong and what wasn’t, not like the rest of us, because every single thing you did, your mom would…”

            “Yeah,” Scott relented.  “I guess I can see that.”

            “You got caught up in all that time to yourself.  Being… free.  You hadn’t had the chance before.  And you made a mistake, just like anyone might, except…”

            “Mine almost killed two people.”

            “Yeah,” Ella managed weakly with another hard gulp, then seemed to recompose herself.  “I know this’ll probably sound stupid, because I saw that news report on your mom before I came over, but… how are you doing, or… you know.”

            “I’ve been better,” Scott choked out, glad that he was sitting down on his girlfriend’s hands for fear of his knees wobbling too hard.

            “And even better wasn’t always that great.”

            “No, it wasn’t,” he said, sniffling but sucking it up immediately.

            “You can relax now, Scott.  It’s okay,” she cooed understandingly.

            Clearly already on the brink from earlier, Scott let fresh tears roll down his cheeks, but he held his head high this time and kept his beet-red scleras locked to Ella’s gaze.

            “I don’t know how to do this,” Scott huffed awkwardly through the moisture.

            “I know,” Ella whispered.  She drew her hands closer to her shirt until Scott’s head was leaning against her abdomen a couple inches below her chest.

            “It felt like I was out.  Like… I could be my own person finally, without someone breathing down my neck and making me pay for everything I ever screwed up.  And then I go and throw myself right back in because I made the worst mistake of my whole life,” Scott rambled, his voice somewhat muffled as he buried his face in the comforting warmth of his girlfriend’s shirt, though she made out enough of the words to follow.

            With most of his weight now leaned against her torso, one of Ella’s hands pulled away and she began to stroke her fingers up and down Scott’s back.

            “I… I don’t even remember getting into my car, or even deciding to get in.  That’s the fucked up part.  I was so… so far gone, I didn’t even think about what I was doing.  I couldn’t even be bothered to remember it,” Scott grunted, getting angrier with himself the longer he expounded on this point, though he was kept in check by Ella’s soothing touch.

            “It wasn’t something you planned.  It just happened,” she murmured.  “Nobody thinks those things through.  Nobody decides to do it.”

            “Ella, I started drinking when I was seventeen.  I wrecked a few things in the house and threw a few parties, yeah, but I never… never got behind a wheel when I was like that.  And I’d never blacked out.  Not like this.  Not where everything was totally, completely gone, like some kind of nightmare.”

            “I know,” she repeated back.  By now, her palm was clasped to Scott’s back and keeping him supported against her stomach in a snug embrace, while her other hand traced in tiny circles on the back of his head with her index finger.

            “So maybe… it’s not wrong that I’m back here.  Maybe I was going to end up here again all along.”

            “Don’t talk like that.  You know that’s not true.”

            “What else can I do, then?”

            “You can beat this thing, Scott.  I know you can.  You got out of here once.  You can do it again,” Ella encouraged, and he could feel her stomach practically vibrating with the enthusiasm of it through her shirt.

            “No I can’t.  You heard what my mom said,” Scott sighed forlornly.

            “Yes, I did.  But she’s not Queen of America.  Maybe she can force you to do what she wants, but she can’t make everybody go along with it.  All you have to do is stay on your best behavior until you go up for review, and you can get out,” Ella explained seriously.  “That’s all.”

            “I don’t think she’ll make it that easy.  She’ll find a way,” Scott protested, and in this moment, he thought back again to the realization he’d made in the presence of the emotionally shell-shocked Maggie only a couple hours before.

            Walking away from Judy’s far-reaching legal grasp wouldn’t just be a near-herculean task on its own; right now, for him, with his two siblings invisibly tied up the web of their mother’s oppressive parentage, it was a personal impossibility, no matter how much he wanted it.

            He had a responsibility for them, because if he didn’t act on their behalf, he knew no one else would.

            He couldn’t free himself from the binds of his family.  Not yet.

            “Maybe she’ll try.  She’s smart, and she’s becoming more important now.  But she’s still not God, Scott.  You need to stop thinking of your mom like an immovable wall, because she’s not.”

            Scott blinked as the tears at last began to dry up.  He twisted his face against the moist patch of Ella’s shirt he had dampened with his anguish, and looked upward toward the soft crook of her neck.

            As much as he was enraged by his mother’s very being, and as much of his youth had been spent rebelling against her dictatorial parenting style, Scott had to admit he had never really thought of Judy Stevens as anything but that.

            “I’ll try,” Scott said as he finally allowed himself to lean away from Ella’s shirt.  Now feeling confident enough that his girlfriend wasn’t afraid to touch him without tongs, he let a few strands of her golden hair slide between his fingertips, and he felt oddly at home, despite the tribulations of the day.

            “I know you will, babe,” she said reassuringly, tilting her chin down to look at him again as she cradled him down to her legs and laid him down.  A smile crossed her lips.

            “What?” Scott asked.

            “The suit is nice.  You look good.”

            “Thanks,” he said, and couldn’t help but crack a little grin himself, against the odds.

            “You were always really crappy at tying your tie.  It looks like you finally got better,” she commented, lifting the tiny fabric flap with a thumb to ensure it wasn’t a clip-on.

            “Yeah, um… not exactly,” Scott mumbled with embarrassment.  “I still suck.”

            Ella raised an eyebrow and allowed herself a gentle chortle.  “Oh.  Then…”

            “Maggie did it,” Scott said, surprising himself again at stating this fact aloud.  “And the rest of it.”

            “Maggie,” Ella repeated back, as though the name was in a foreign language, and wrinkled her nose with the same warranted surprise.

            “Yeah…”

            “Well, that’s… um...” Ella muttered.  “Why?”

            Scott shrugged.  “She… said I looked nice and she wanted you to see me in it.”

            “Well, she was right.”

            “Thanks,” Scott grimaced.  “And thanks for… you know.”

            “Sure,” she responded.  “Who else is going to do it?”

            “How long are you going to stay?” Scott asked, hoping his desperation to soak up every second in her presence didn’t come through too pathetically.

            “Well, I don’t know, how long until your mom comes back?” Ella said.  “Nice as this is, you might want to lowball it.  It hasn’t always worked out so great when you’ve tried to guess before.”

            “Yeah, no shit,” Scott uttered with a bittersweet chuckle that Ella shared somewhat apologetically.  “But I don’t think she’ll be back for two hours.”

            “Sounds like plenty,” Ella whispered, and reclaiming her twelve-inch boyfriend beneath her palms, she scooped him upward toward her lips, planting a messily wet smooch onto the lower half of his face before he could even begin to react.

            She drew him back to happily gauge his entertainingly surprised gaping mouth and bugged eyes, but now with the warning in place, she brought him in again for a more mutual exchange, and Scott’s fists tightened passionately around those strands of hair as he allowed himself to disappear into the moment, savoring the safety he felt and the plush moisture of Ella’s sweet-smelling skin.

            Maybe he could do this.

            Maybe the fight wasn’t over just yet.

            It was nearly midnight when Judy Stevens re-entered the dimly lit kitchen and made eye contact with her son for the first time since that morning as he sat cross-legged on the table in waiting.

            The silence between them was deafening.  At last, Judy uncrossed her arms and, with index finger extended, reached down toward the table with her right hand, gently grazing under Scott’s chin with her fingertip, forcing his chin to tilt up even more.

            “Hi, honey,” she stated sweetly.  “I guess we should have a little talk, shouldn’t we?”

            “Maybe,” Scott drawled, trying not to let the coldness through.

            “Well, let’s go get comfortable, then,” she sighed.  Clasping her palm to her son’s chest and wrapping her fingers around his sides, she plucked him like a doll from the table and strode nonchalantly into the living room.  Though her hand remained motionless as it gripped him with complete security, Scott noticed that his mother wasn’t bothering with the courtesy of hugging him into a cozier cradle, instead allowing his legs to dangle awkwardly over the drop and kick occasionally at her thigh.

            As he mentally prepared himself for the second difficult conversation of his evening on this couch, out of the corner of his eye, he could see the PMRD resting idly in its case on the coffee table.

            Judy lowered herself into the deep cushions.  She leaned casually into the pillows, draping her free arm over the back and propping both feet up next to the PMRD.  At last, she deposited her son onto her right knee as it crossed over her left, allowing him the highest perch available.  Her other arm followed suit as she allowed herself to recline smugly like a warlord on a throne of slaughtered foes.

            The bitter standoff continued silently for another minute.  Judy’s lips were pursed tightly as she studied Scott, who bit his tongue and clenched his hands together to keep them from shaking as he sat atop his mother’s warm skin.

            “You must hate me,” the woman breathed at last with a tilt of her head that allowed several strands of her blonde hair to cascade over her eye.  “Don’t you?”

            Scott felt a scowl welling in his throat, but he willed himself to keep it bottled up.  He’d convinced himself earlier to show some restraint for the sake of his newfound rigor, thanks in no small part to Ella’s encouragement, and he’d be damned if he was going to just give in and provide his mother with more ammunition.

            “You might as well be honest with me now, Scott,” she suggested.  “Because that’s what I’m going to do for you.”

            “I doesn’t really matter how I feel about you, Mom.  Or any of this.  Does it?” Scott countered frigidly.

            “It does to me.”

            “Okay.  So I hate you,” he snarled, realizing that she’d already decided what his opinion was.  He noticed a visible flinch in his mother’s composure.  “Happy?”

            “No, but I wouldn’t have expected anything less,” she declared at length, after closing her eyes for several moments in reflection.  “I think I’d hate me too if I was in your position.”

            “That’s comforting,” Scott offered.

            “I’m sure you aren’t feeling much goodwill toward Nancy, either, after today.”

            Flinching at the mention of the woman’s name, Scott had to pause in his state of barely quelled indignation to let his brow bend into a frown.

            How would Judy have even known?

            “Right.  Goodwill,” Scott said with a defeatist chuckle and a disbelieving shake of his head.  “You know she forced my head inside herself, right?”
            “I know, honey, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there to put a stop to it,” Judy commented softly, her expression virtually unchanged at this recognition.  Her words rang genuinely, and she had indeed been true to her word last time she made such a promise, but her irises displayed no additional spark of compassion.  She was a monolith.  “I’m going to have a talk with her tomorrow and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

            “Okay.”

            “So you can be honest about her, too.”

            “Okay, sure then, I hate her too.”

            “I don’t blame you for feeling that way.  There do need to be boundaries, even with your work here,” Judy insisted.  “I think we can work things out to everyone’s satisfaction.”

            Work things out.

            That seemed like a longer shot than Scott jumping up and touching the ceiling at his current height.  Even if Nancy never laid a finger on him again, it wasn’t going to do a damn thing about the memory of it, as well as this whole wretched day.

            Still, Judy had found out somehow, and he had a feeling that Nancy hadn’t bragged about it to her.

            How?

            “I guess it won’t make any difference to say that I still love you just the same,” Judy offered.  “Or that I’m sorry if you’re unhappy with how things are now.”

            “I thought you said you wanted honesty now.”

            “I do.  And that’s the truth.  I still have your best interests at heart, like I always have.  What I’m doing for you doesn’t change the fact that you’re my son, and my greatest concern is your wellbeing.”

            “What you’re doing… for me?” Scott choked, already feeling his raw eyes flooding with angry tears.  “Mom.  You told the whole city and anybody else who was listening that you’re going to fight to keep everyone like me small… forever.  How am I supposed to feel about that?”

            “I wouldn’t expect you to understand the good of what I’m doing,” Judy said with a slight shrug, adopting a less apologetic tone now.  “You’re still just practically a child.”

            “I am not still a kid, Mom,” he spat indignantly.  “I know you’ve looked at me that way since you could start choosing how tall I am whenever the hell you want, but it doesn’t change that I’m my own person.  Was my own person, until all of your legal bullshit took it away.”

            “That legal bullshit is the only reason you’re not locked away in a prison cell right now, honey,” Judy said coolly.  “Did you forget that I did that for you, too?”

            “No, I didn’t.  And maybe it was still what I wanted.  But… but not with this, too.  Not when you’re trying to take away my right to live,” Scott hacked with agonizing clarity, his limbs trembling from the adrenaline of airing his grievances so blatantly.  “So maybe I was better off without your help and just going in a cell for a few years.”

            “If that’s how you feel, then maybe there’s something else I need to make you understand,” his mother sighed, at last lifting her long arms off the back of the couch.  Without warning, the fingers of her gigantic right hand curled into a claw and she snatched Scott by the shirt, dragging him along her firm thigh and lifting her hand closer to her face until he was forced to stand on his tiptoes against the surface of her shirt to avoid dangling.

            “You’re going to want to listen close to this, sweetie, because it’s important,” Judy said as she gazed unblinkingly into her son’s eyes while he struggled against her massive clenched fingers directly under his nose, her fist the same width as his chest.  “This thing that I’ve started?  That I’ve gotten so many people to support now?  Whether you agree with it or not, it’s going forward.  We’re going to make the people understand what this country needs, and soon, everyone who chose the way of harming American citizens is going to be permanently taken down to this level, where they belong.”

            Scott grunted, his chest heaving with acidic rage.

            “So what you need to start learning is that the options were never to become mommy’s little boy again, or go behind bars.  They were to become my little boy again, or become a little prisoner in a box on a shelf, like some zoo exhibit.  Is that really what you wanted?”

            Fuming now and practically imploding at his own powerlessness, both in Judy’s literal grip and in her authority, Scott vengefully grasped one of his mother’s curled iron fingers in each of his fists and locked eyes with her again.

            Staring into her irises gave Scott worse chills under his skin than the most extreme PMRD readjustment.  Far more frightening than raving madness, there was a sincere honesty in her eyes.  He could see it.

            She believed every word she had been saying all day about consequences and human rights.  There was nothing about her power play that was grounded in her intense desire for control, present though it was.  This was well beyond that.  This wasn’t just a political mission.  This was his mother’s religion, pure and unadulterated.  Her reason for living.

            “Well, is it?” she repeated.  She drew her hand closer toward her face until Scott’s legs were left kicking in the air again and his head was an inch away from her cushioned lips as they expelled muggy air stickily against his face with each syllable.

            “I don’t think I know anymore,” Scott whispered defiantly, though his words were true.

            “Aww, honey, you’re going hurt my feelings,” Judy responded with far more tenderness than the young man knew was actually swelled inside her.  Puckering up, she planted a soft peck on her son’s face with a moist smack, then went in for a second, this time practically enveloping his head back between her wet lips on a satisfied inhalation.

            Scott’s heart fluttered painfully in memory of several days before, when he’d found himself inside his mother’s mouth at a twelfth of this size, but he managed to keep it together as Judy pulled his saliva-drenched head back out again.

            “I guess there’s a lot of that going around lately,” Scott said with a swallow, and did his best not to cough humiliatingly from the few bitingly flavorful dribbles of stray saliva that had worked their way into his nostrils and throat from the kiss.

            A smirk cracking over her lips, Judy snickered and shook her head piteously.

            “I do appreciate you sticking with this honesty policy, honey,” she said genuinely.  “So as long as you are, I might as well do the same for you.”

            “Okay.”

            “Everything I’ve ever done was to ensure you grow up healthy and productive.  I tried when you were younger to steer you right, but again and again you defied me, fought me every step of the way.  You proved that you simply weren’t capable of it, and you’re obviously still having a hard time seeing the bigger picture now.  Your purpose is and always was to be a servant of the values I raised you on.  And I think, with time, you’ll begin to understand that being back where I can keep your life on track for you is the best thing for everyone.”

            “Wanna bet?” Scott hissed challengingly.

            “No, not particularly.  Because do you want to know something else?” Judy posed casually.  “Whether you learn to like it or not, you’re here for the long haul: in my house, under my roof, under my rules…”

            Before he knew it, Scott was being thrust away from his mother’s lips and toward the floor between her legs.  She pinned him by his shoulders with her powerful fingers, forcing him to stare up at what he knew was coming before his back even hit the carpet.

            Her right foot descended immediately from the coffee table, her toes wriggling above his face and her peachy, crinkled sole hovering ominously above him before planting itself onto his body, burying him beneath its heat and weight with a loud grunt automatically coaxed from Scott’s lips.  The doughy heft of the ball of her foot pivoted ferociously against his chest, cementing its absolute dominance in motion and might.

            “…as well as anything else I happen to want you under,” Judy simpered, scrunching her toes aggressively against Scott’s face and pinching his cheeks stingingly between the fleshy folds.  “The time has come for you to make a couple important decisions, honey.”

“I thought you were making the decisions for me now,” Scott huffed against the mashing weight of his mother’s foot bearing down on his chest cavity, more unrelenting than ever.  The stench of her unwashed flesh, rich with salt and lint, forced its way down his throat with every rebellious breath, but he was beyond noticing it now.

            “I am.  Most of them, anyway.  But this is something you have to do for yourself,” Judy declared softly as she leaned down over the edge of the couch, looming above as Scott peered up at her between the window of her separated toes.

            “What?”

            “Your life may be on the right track now, but that doesn’t mean it has to be difficult for you.  This, right now, what’s happening to you… it doesn’t need to be like this.  Once you take on the right attitude, things could be a little paradise for you.”

            “I don’t think we have the same ideas about what makes a paradise, Mom,” Scott said as he wrapped his hands hopelessly around a doughy toe that was flattening itself hard against his forehead.

            “Maybe not.  But here’s my idea of it, because like most of the ideas that will be affecting you for at least the next eleven months, mine is the only one that you should be concerned with,” Judy said, clearing her throat.  “You can sleep in your bed again.  Eat normal meals with us.  Wear clothes all the time.  I can make sure Maggie gives you more of a break.  I’ll get Nancy completely off your case.  You can leave the house with us, use the phone, and spend time with Ella.”

            Scott gnawed his lip.  He was still facing oblivion, but compared to what his life was now, it really did sound like a paradise.

            Blinking, the prisoner willed himself to remain a resilient wall, even as his mother pinned his doll-sized body down so easily.

            He was not going to let her win him over mentally, too.

            “And just in case you’ve forgotten that your mommy isn’t stupid…” Judy continued gravely.  “…I know my new system may not take hold before you can get through your sentence here.  I assume that’s crossed your mind, too.”

            This fact had, of course, occurred to him after his conversation with Ella earlier, though he hadn’t expected his mother to acknowledge it as a possibility.  That there was still a light somewhere at the end of the tunnel for him, even if there wasn’t for anyone else who couldn’t escape the titanium grip of new American justice in time.

            “Right,” Scott croaked, his chest rising and falling more in time with his parent’s lightly perspiring foot as it adjusted his breathing rhythm for him.  Judy was offering him the world, or at least as much as she was willing to parse out from her own share.

            It couldn’t be this simple.  It never was.

            “So what is it you want from me, then?” he drawled.

            “Nothing even you can’t handle, honey.  All you have to do is obey our requests and keep your mouth closed about things you’re not old enough to understand yet.  And when the time comes, help make it clear that this way of life is the best for all citizens in our nation’s penal system.”

            “How exactly would I make that clear?” Scott grumbled, already knowing the answer.

            “Just stand behind me, Scott.  Show the people exactly what the world can be like when it runs smoothly under the new system, with your actions and your words.”

            There was the kicker.

            She wanted a mascot.  Someone to help her ensure the lifelong imprisonment of the bodies and minds of thousands of citizens just like him.  Someone to dance around and sing her song of perverted justice, to force-feed her revolting dogma to the public.  The very idea of it made Scott want to vomit, but his raw fury overpowered this desire.

            “And if I don’t agree to play puppet for you?” he spat.

            “Then I will just have to find other long-term uses for you, sweetie,” Judy sighed with sudden tenderness again.  She reached forward, scooped the PMRD from its open case on the table, and had the barrel wedged between her toes and poking at Scott’s nose before he had the chance to gasp with surprise.

            So close up, the emerald flash momentarily blinded Scott and drained him of heat as he dwindled instantaneously down from the size of a doll to the height of his mother’s big toe, her entire hulking size-12 foot increasing from a mere mattress-sized payload to a veritable behemoth of stomping power and wrinkled flesh.

            With a twist in his gut, Scott realized his mother had only been able to hit his face with the ray between her toes, as his tiny body was once again left bare amidst a massive bundle of empty garments beneath the heaving ceiling of mature skin.

            Already immobilized under the pulsing weight of a squishy toeprint, Scott squirmed helplessly as Judy expertly plucked her trinket-scaled son into the crevice between her big and second toes before lithely lifting her foot back into the air and placing her heel onto the coffee table with a hearty thump.

            The ride upward was lightning-fast and practically turned Scott’s organs inside out from the unpleasant rush.

            “You came from me, Scott,” Judy drawled calmly as she restfully clasped her hands together atop her stomach and peered down at her hapless offspring clenched nakedly between her toes at a single inch in height.  “I gave you life.  I raised you, provided for you, and created chance after chance for you to make something of yourself.  And now, finally, one way or the other, whether it’s for the next couple years as my little model citizen, or whether it’s… a little longer than that, just making me comfortable, you will make yourself useful to me.”

            Scott tried to come up with something to say as he gazed up the humbling distance of his mother’s curvaceous thighs, along her arms and shoulders, and toward her self-satisfied face so far off with its contented grin and patient eyes.

            His mind raced as he grappled helplessly with what he now realized was an offer she was presenting to him: a livable length of time spent at this miserable height with a smile on his face and a lie on his lips for all the world to see and hear, not to mention the corruption of his very soul for aiding in the ultimate perversion of legal integrity.

            Either that, or he could spend the rest of his days with his mother’s colossal toes embracing him in the sweaty blackness of her favorite high heels.

            Scott was practically foaming at the mouth with rage, but Judy handily squeezed the air from his lungs with another scrunch of her meaty digits, and he was forced to hang limply like a crunched leaf in the overpowering vice of feminine skin and muscle, ensconced in the familiar, nauseating waft of toejam and sour flesh at a level tenfold what he’d experienced moments before.

            Every breath stung, tainted by the inescapable cliff that made up his forty-four-year-old mother’s eternally domineering appendage.

            “So… if you decide to be difficult, and fight back against the inevitable, then you’ll force my hand.  Because my voice will still matter most to that disciplinary review board next year, and if I should happen to feel disappointed with your behavior, they’re going to know it,” Judy sighed sadly as she crossed her leg over her opposite ankle and began playfully bouncing her foot up and down, churning her son’s stomach even further.  She gave him another wring, this time rolling him over between her dexterous digits and watching him fruitlessly wrestle with the walls of overpowering flesh.

            “And your only purpose… your only reason for existing… will be to repay everything I have ever done for you in full,” she uttered.  “You will live and breathe to ensure your mother doesn’t regret bringing you into this world.  The choice is entirely yours.”

            There was a deadening silence.  Scott struggled to keep his vision from blurring while his titan-sized parent toyed with him as a lioness over a crippled muskrat.

            With effort, he chewed over each word of his mother’s slimy accord delivered with a heaping spoonful of disingenuous sugar.  He was well-aware that this was by far the single most honest conversation he’d ever had with his mother in all his life, and the totality of it was almost as overwhelming as the musculature of her titanic foot.

            “C’mon, honey.  This isn’t hard.  Everyone wins if you’d just listen to me for once.  I have to believe that deep in that cute little head of yours is the capacity to see reason and act in the best interest of yourself and everyone around you.  I know you’ve never used it before, but I want you to try it now and see what happens,” Judy explained with a dictatorial glint in her eye, positively drunk on this moment but nonetheless in full control.  “I think you’ll surprise yourself.”

            No more words were exchanged as Judy draped her arms over the back of the couch once again and clicked on the TV.  The images flashed behind Scott with neon aplomb and he felt like he recognized a few reporter voices, but all he could see was the expanse of his mother’s vertical foot and ankle as she pivoted her crossed heel against the top of the other leg.

            Her toes remained firmly clasped to his bare sides, well beyond the point that he’d started nervously cold-sweating from having to stare down at the distance to the coffee table surface, easily a full two stories for him.

            The channels were continually flipped until Judy’s name came up on CNN in a discussion of the Shrink Act, as well as a reference to her political intents, which elicited a proud chuckle from the Stevens matriarch as she settled in to listen to the full ten-minute story without budging her toes’ steel grasp on her powerless twenty-one-year-old charge.

            Scott had comfortably worked himself into a barely present state where he was able to ignore the precarious plunge that would await him if he became unwedged from his mother’s firm toes.  It made it all the more jarring, then, when he realized he had been pinched back between Judy’s thumb and forefinger and was rocketing back over the dizzying expanse of her reclining body.

            Half-expecting to pass between them, given how this conversation had been going so far, Scott instead made impact with his mother’s puckered lips with a squeaking smack that lasted a full five seconds as she rocked him against the rounded pink entrance of her mouth.

            When she’d finished, she began speaking without bothering to draw him back far enough to make out her eyes, instead letting him take on the full brunt of unfurling mugginess and flung spit that popped from her lips as she whispered sultrily.

            “You need to get some rest, sweetie,” she declared, her lips hanging open between paused words, forcing him to drink in the visage of her glistening cave.  She ascended from the couch cushion and stood at full height, suspending Scott over a drop to the floor towering enough to give anyone vertigo six times over.  “You’ve had a long, long day, and you’ve got a lot of thinking to do.  I know it might seem tough right now, and for that I’m willing to be a little patient with you.  But… not too much.”

            Scott shuddered as he wiped away a few flecks of froth that had been launched from deep within his mother’s jowls.

            It seemed as though she had him trapped in every way conceivable.

            His own freedom, but only in exchange for helping to put everyone who’d ever made the worst mistake of their lives into an eternal time-out.

            “Just remember that this is all for your own good.  Everything I do is for your own good.  Think on that.  Dream about it.  And when you tell me that you’re seeing things… mommy’s way… then we’ll make sure you get everything you deserve,” Judy breathed throatily.  She punctuated her speech with a final kiss that engulfed Scott’s face into the pillowy gate of her lips.  “All you have to do is stop fighting.”

            Feeling as though he’d been frosted over beyond human recognition, Scott listlessly waited as his mother lowered him back onto the couch cushion between gargantuan pinched fingers where his makeshift bed sat.

            The sound of her authoritative footsteps as she marched away echoed mightily in his eardrums just from their sheer difference in size, but by now, he’d disappeared back into his head.  He replayed Ella’s words from earlier in the back of his mind, forcing himself to swallow the fear and illogic of his odds and focus intently.

            He would not be beaten.  Not yet.

            Not even by a woman who had him and now a large portion of the country piled helplessly into the palm of her hand.

            His attention was abruptly jerked back into the wildly daunting present when CNN flashed to a new subject, at last abandoning its coverage of Judy’s grandiose exploits that afternoon.

            Once again, Scott found himself staring at the static image of the same face from several days before: he was met with the parted silver-blonde hair, the square jaw, and the piercing eyes that dared him to claw back through his mind and remember.

            “We’re just getting word on an update for the Walter Brandon and Cambralart Financials story,” the anchor read.  “After his altercation with police in Chicago three days ago that resulted in his escape, Brandon was tracked down in a hotel lobby twenty miles away from Cambralart’s primary headquarters.  He was reputedly discovered with airline tickets to Quebec.  Though a thorough investigation into the magnitude of Brandon’s defrauding scam is only just beginning, the one-hundred-and-seventeen-million-dollar figure initially provided is now believed to be a low estimate.  With his personal files in the hands of the authorities, it was discovered as well that Walter Brandon only served as a pseudonym for his crimes.  He has now been identified under his real name, Thomas Stevens.  More on this as it develops.”

            Scott felt his body momentarily go half-paralyzed from the shock, as everything snapped instantly into place, and he managed to breathe into the shadowy isolation of the room through limp jaws: “Dad?”