Vignette #1 - Flatmate

Valerie yawned in boredom, her eyes glued to the 24-inch monitor set upon the desk in her cubicle. Even though it was well past 4pm, there were still phones ringing and agents speaking with whoever was on the other line. In her case, Valerie had already completed most of her work for the day and compiled and sent the report to her supervisor via email. All she could do then was wait for 4:30 to arrive, and she would be free to spend the rest of her day however she liked.

On that note, she already knew what she wanted to do once she got home.

Her toes flexed inside of her right flat, the sensitive digits rubbing against the small mass tucked inside. It was motionless; in fact, she had barely felt it move since soon after arriving at work for the day. She lightly nudged it with her toes, and could feel minute--very minute--movements from it. Good, she thought. It would have been a shame if it had bitten the dust before she could get back to her house.

She looked at the time in the bottom right corner of her computer screen: 4:17 PM. She sighed, and navigated to Youtube, opting to waste away the rest of her time watching random videos, whatever she came across that looked interesting. Of course, she was careful about what she brought up; the IT crew could have been monitoring her at that moment from their cave two floors down. Why her as opposed to one of the other fifty-something people in her office at the moment? Who was to say, but it was a possibility, and the wrong link could send her straight to her supervisor's office.

A bit over ten minutes later, Valerie removed her headphones from the PC and closed all open application windows, before shutting down the PC. After gathering her belongings into her leather bag, she picked up said bag and turned and exited her cubicle. Another day down, she thought.

As she headed towards the badge reader to officially swipe out, her eye's attention was caught by Stevie, one of the relatively-newer employees in her department, standing by the window and speaking with two other men. He was a young and handsome African American man, kind of a dork but otherwise a very nice person. She found herself somewhat attracted to him, though her best friends, Candace and Kyra, would say that the only reason Valerie liked him at all was due to his race. Both of them--Candace especially, due to her being Black as well--would often tease Valerie over her being a "chocolate-eater", an accusation that Valerie did not dispute. After all, her actions spoke louder than words, and luckily in her case, it seemed that more and more Black men were pursuing Asian women these days. Of course, all of said Black men who were drawn to her sweet Asian nectar had a habit of... disappearing, so to speak.

In any case, she longed for the day she would be able to make Stevie hers. ...Not romantically, of course, but physically, and in more ways than one.

"Some day..." she dreamily muttered to herself, just as she had reached the shift clock and swiped with her badge. With a ding that confirmed the end of her shift, she made her way into the hallway, called the elevator, and rode it down to the ground floor, and eventually arrived at her car, a white 2011 Toyota Camry, parked inside of the company's parking garage.

Once inside, she tossed her bag into the back, sat back in the driver's seat, and let out a sigh of relief. She then briefly looked around at her surroundings for any would-be on-lookers. The coast was clear, not that anyone would have been paying any attention to her anyway.

She popped her heel from its right flat, and then reached down to slip the shoe entirely from her foot, leaving her tired bare sole to rest for a minute on the rug beneath the pedals. She held the red flat--donned with a string bow on front of its mouth--before her, and squinted her eyes to peer inside.

The dark-skinned figure laid on the far end of her flat, against the mesh wall. She slightly shook her shoe; no response. With her other hand, she reached inside and poked at it with her index finger. Her flesh could feel weak movements, and after pulling her hand back to look closely inside once more, she could make out slight movements, its body struggling to breathe in as much clean air as it could. After all, this was the first time since morning where it was afforded the opportunity to do so.

"Hey there, you little black insect," Valerie spoke, in a rather cheery tone. "Did you enjoy hanging out with me?" She didn't want for an answer. "Yeah, I had fun, too. You kept my stress down, and God knows I needed it today. Anyway, the day's over, so it's time to go home. Hang in there for a little bit longer, okay?"

With those words said, she slid her shoe back onto its foot--her toes once again securing its tiny passenger in place--and then she started up her car. Before long, she had exited the garage and was well on the way back to her humble abode.


Fifteen minutes later, Valerie entered into her own home, an average one-story house in a quiet suburban neighborhood. Even though she had been living on her own for nearly a year by that point, she still found it a bit surreal. No longer having to deal with her family on a daily basis, she was free to do whatever she wanted in a house that she could call her own, albeit with financial help from her father. Either way, the privacy was a godsend, as it allowed her more opportunities to "play", without her parents or younger sisters getting nosy or interfering.

Her family had no idea that she even possessed her power. She intended to keep it that way.

Valerie made her way through the halls and into her bedroom, where she dropped off her bag and removed her teal blazer and tossed it onto her bed. After relieving herself in the bathroom, she then headed into the dining room, wherein its curtains were drawn, to block out not only the sunlight but also any possible overzealous eyes.

It looked like it was finally time. She had awaited this moment all day; all week, even.

Using the front of her left foot, she held down her right flat from its back as she pulled her foot out of it. She then used her one-again bare foot to push the empty flat several inches in front of her, after which said foot settled onto the cool, wooden floor.

"Alright, ride's over," Valerie announced to the shoe's inhabitant. "Time for you to get out, bug."

She watched her flat's opening in anticipation, waiting for the tiny passenger to stumble into the light and climb out onto the floor. Once that was done, she would move on to the final stage of her little game.

...However, there was no activity. Not even after two minutes had passed.

Valerie frowned in annoyance as she put her hands on her waist and kept waiting for the passenger to show himself.

"Any day now..." She said, her bare foot now tapping the floor impatiently.

Another short period of waiting yielded similar results, or lack thereof.

"I know you're not dead. I could still feel you move a little right before I took my shoe off."

Yet another two minutes passed, and still there was no response. By this point, Valerie's patience had worn thin.

"Augh, Jesus Christ..." She kneeled down and took hold of her flat with a single hand. Then, she turned it upside-down. "Out, out!"

Thanks to her efforts, the tiny inhabitant quickly tumbled out from within the red shoe, and hit the floor with a quiet-but-probably painful smack. However, even there, the young and fit Black man laid on the floor, catching his breath as best as he could. He had been reduced to two inches tall, and he was nude, his clothing removed during their bout of lust on the night they had crossed paths; once she was satisfied with the sex, she made her next move and shrunk him down to his present size. This occurred five nights ago, and Valerie made sure to keep him alive for all of that time, if only barely.

But she had fought the urge long enough.

"There," she said to the man as she stood back up. "Free at last."

The tiny man stayed on the ground, his lungs taking in more and more fresh air. Valerie prodded his body with her bare foot's big toe, tapping it on his chest softly. However, it was enough to make him yelp in pain. He truly had been spent.

"C'mon, I'm not even touching you that hard," she said as she kept her toe in place and pressed down slightly. "But if it hurts so much, I'll let go if you kiss my toe."

Perhaps it was desperation, but the man almost immediately did as she commanded, using whatever strength he had left to clutch onto her toe and plant it with several weak kisses. Her toe pushed down ever so slightly, but it was enough for the man's lipped assault to be replaced with a cry of pain.

"...Really?" Valerie was partially surprised. "You really are a weak little bug, aren't you?" Mercifully, she removed her foot from the man, leaving him there to gather his bearings. "What am I going to do with you?"

"...You..." Between breaths, the man finally spoke. "...You..."

"Hm?" Valerie listened in curiosity.

"You... 're an evil bitch," he mustered up to say.

Valerie shrugged. "Uh, thanks? What's your point? Are you trying to hurt my feelings?"

"You evil..." The man was clearly agitated; the pressure of being her tiny slave--or foot toy--had finally gotten to him.

"Well, whatever." Valerie slipped her bare foot back into its flat, the shoe now containing only her foot and nothing else. "You're pretty much useless to me now. I was hoping you would last one more day, since it's only Thursday, but I can see that you're done already." She sighed wistfully. "A shame, really."

The man kept looking up at her, hatred and fear--but mostly the former--filling the entirely of his tiny eyes shooting her a sharp glare.

"Can you get up?" She asked. "Go on, get up."

After several seconds has passed, the man started to attempt to do what she had ordered him to, but it seemed as if he was too exhausted to grant her request. He struggled to stand to his feel, but each time he tried, he fell right back onto the floor.

Valerie was disappointed. "...Oh... Damn, I was hoping you'd make this a challenge," she said. "I mean, you actually did run away from me all those times I tried to step on you before, but to be fair, I wasn't really trying all that hard."

With those last words, the fear in the man's eyes overtook the hatred, as if he knew what her intentions were. And with that, he seemed to be met with a second wind, as he pushed his body well past its already-surpassed limit and managed to stand up. Then, he quickly stumbled away from her, though at a much slower pace than he had shown her before during their earlier games.

Valerie smiled. "Very good. You see, it's always more fun when you bugs try to get away."

She moved her right foot over in the tiny man's direction, and--as it hovered only four inches from the floor--she took aim.

"But you're still too slow for me, insect." From her vantage point, the tiny man disappeared completely behind the view of her foot, poised to make the final strike upon the tiny man below. He must have known as well, as he has taken to screaming and pleading for her to spare him.

She almost had half a mind to do just that, to prolong his suffering just for a little bit longer.

Valerie giggled. The truth was, she had grown bored of him, despite this last burst of energy. And thus, he needed to die.

And die he did, once her foot came down upon him.

Beneath her flat, the tiny man's body audibly crunched as his bones broke, his entire frame being violently flattened by her size-five foot. She licked her lips as she felt through her shoe's thin sole each crack of his skeleton and the wet gurgling of his blood; it was a feeling that she truly relished, of ending the life of a man underfoot like the bug that she had reduced him to.

After twisting and grinding him into a fine paste, she finally lifted and removed her foot from its prey, exposing the once-human mess to the air. Indeed, thanks to her efforts, he had been completely shredded into a mesh of torn flesh, grounded bones, and deep red blood, the liquid almost matching the shade of her flat. The dark grey-beige bottom of her shoe held more of his remains--some worked into the treads of its sole--which would blotch the floor with each step she took if she left her shoes on.

She sighed in euphoric satisfaction. It was such a beautiful kill, transforming such a handsome man--a Black man especially, as per her own tastes--into a gruesome crimson stain on the floor. Not even sex could compare to this feeling.

"I waited all week to do that," Valerie purred to herself. "It was worth it."

Of course, now she had to clean up. After all, if she let the mess stay there for too long, it would dry and cake itself onto the wooden surface, making it even harder to clear. Plus, if company--specifically, her family--happened to come over, she would have a hard time explaining that away.

Thus, she left for the kitchen to get her cleaning utensils, not caring too much of the blood she was tracking with her flat; it'd all be cleaned up in the process.

Even then, her mind was still replaying her kill, reliving those final moments of the tiny man's life. ...That tiny man...

...Wait, what was his name again? Valerie had just simply called him "bug" or "insect", never by his actual name, and thus, this information was eluding her. She stopped in her tracks and pondered this mystery over in her head.

After a minute of thinking on it, she shrugged in indifference and continued on with preparing for her chore.

The man's name was not important.



------>

Vignette #2 - Sweet Morsels

Though he was in complete darkness, Richard could feel the world around him rocking in a steady motion. It was so much so that he could not keep a steady footing, so he simply sat down on the ground. Or floor. Or whatever one would call the cardboard bottom of the containment that he and three other hapless victims were inside of. Even then, they were knocked to and fro, sometimes even colliding with each other, but they hardly reacted to the impacts. They all had since lost their will to fight.

All four of the men were subjected to horrors that they never thought possible before their individual ordeals began. To begin with, each one of them was, at present, only an inch-and-a-half tall, reduced from their once-proud statures by what could only be described as arcane magic. Their tormentor took great care to abuse them just enough so that they would not die, for it appeared that she had other plans for them.

He did not know if this current transport tied into those plans, but he was afraid to find out.

Not that he had any choice in the matter, all things said.

The men inside were all silent, except for the grunts of the occasional collision. Perhaps the other men could sense the impending danger, and dared not speak of it.

Soon, however, their short journey ended with a thud below them. Then, they could hear shuffling from above, before the light suddenly rained down and stung their retinas. The covering of their containment had been removed, and as their eyes adjusted to seeing a glimpse of the outside for the first time that day, they found themselves looking face-to-face with the young woman who started this all.

Unlike the minuscule, naked men inside of the box, she was still her normal human size, an estimated 5-foot-4 or 5-foot-5, though to them, she was more comparable to the tall high-rises seen downtown. Her young Asian face looked down upon the men, her mouth curved into a slight grin as one could see the clear eagerness in her dark eyes. Neither Richard nor the other men had any idea what this woman, Valerie, was planning, but they knew that it was no good.

"You guys are looking really good right now," Valerie said, before licking her lips. "I'm really looking forward to this."

Her massive fair-skinned hand then reached into their containment and began to pluck them out, one-by-one, between its index finger and thumb. Richard was the third one to be taken out and placed into the palm of her other hand. Once his bare feet hit the soft flesh of her hand, Richard could get a better look at his surroundings; needless to say, they were still inside of Valerie's house, but had been moved to an unfamiliar room. Unfamiliar in the sense that they had never physically been in this specific room, but judging by the sink, the wall cabinets, the microwave on a distant counter, and the silver refrigerator, it was clear that they were in her kitchen. Compared to the kitchen of Richard's own residence, it was nothing special, but he could not exactly feel proud of his higher socio-economic standing in this situation.

Richard suddenly got a bad feeling. As he exchanged nervous glances with the now three other men rejoining him in her gigantic palm, he could tell that the feeling was mutual.

Valerie carried the group a short distance, after which she sat down in a chair and then tilted her hand slightly over the table she sat before. Due to the incline, all of the men slid off from her hand and fell onto a hard, cool white surface. As her hand pulled away, Richard and the men examined what they had been set upon; the ceramic object was circular, with a bit of a slight incline surrounding them on all sides. There were what looked like small crumbs scattered here-and-there, as well as trace amounts of juice of some kind. Past the white, they could just barely see a greater brown landscape, likely the wood of the table. Even further, he could see the night outside of the kitchen window, its shades drawn to a close.

To their right was a wine glass half-filled with red liquid inside; whether said liquid was wine or not was a mystery to Richard. To the opposite side was a white bowl; its contents, if any, were also unknown. Right in front of them was Valerie herself, her face wearing a voracious mask.

It did not take two brain cells to figure out that they had been set upon a plate. And it seemed that Valerie was just about ready to enjoy a meal.

That bad feeling Richard and the other men were experiencing intensified. With no actual food--or remaining food--to be seen, it was clear just what this meal would consist of.

"You guys are looking really delicious right now," Valerie spoke to them, essentially confirming their fears. "I'm really looking forward to this."

Burt, to Richard's immediate left, took a step forward and spoke out at the sadistic giant. "Wait, you seriously gonna eat us!?" He said in a horrified tone.

"Mm-hm," Valerie nonchalantly answered as she reached over to her right, and picked up something from the table. Once her hand returned, Richard could see that her fingers held onto a pair of wooden sticks, bound together by a small ribbon. "I know chopsticks are kinda stereotypical, but..." She undid the ribbon, separating them and then nimbly holding both sticks in her right hand. "They really are the best for eating you guys."

Richard had heard enough, and it seemed that the other men all felt the same, as they each bolted in the opposite direction, intending to find some way to escape this grisly fate.

"Where do you all think you're going?" Valerie said. "It's pointless to run away, because I can just catch you all again."

Nonetheless, they persisted, eventually jumping off of the white plate that held them and onto the greater wooden table. Still in their group of four, they kept at it, aiming at no particular destination but to get away from this clearly-unhinged woman. For a while, it seemed as if she was just content on watching them flee.

That was, until the chopsticks attacked.

First, they grabbed onto Richard, clutching him by the torso. He kicked and screamed and fought to free himself, but to no avail; he expected the worst as he was taken off from the table and pulled backwards. However, he found himself dropped back onto the center of the plate. Lonnie and Jake followed suit, both of them being brought back and dropped down besides Richard.

Finally, there was Burt, who like his companions was captured by Valerie's chopsticks and taken into the air. However, rather than return him onto the plate, the screaming man was instead taken past it, towards the bowl to their side.

"Let's add some more flavor to you, my sweet chocolate tart," Valerie said, dunking the still-screaming man into the bowl twice via the chopsticks, operating them with masterful dexterity.

After the second time, Burt was pulled completely out of the bowl but suspended a few inches above it. Richard and the other men saw that he was now coated with a thick dark brown sauce, not unlike chocolate. She let him remain there for a few seconds, perhaps to let to residual sauce drip from his body.

"Mmm, now you look even more scrumptious!" Valerie pulled Burt closer to her face, the unfortunate, wannabe rapper still hollering at the top of his lungs while flailing his limbs. "Now, it's time to dig in!"

"No, no!!" Burt shouted as her mouth opened and he was moved inside of it, the dual sticks finally releasing their hold and allowing him to drop inside.

His begging and pleading all but disappeared--at least from the remaining men's point-of-view--once Valerie's lips sealed the man inside. Then, after a two second wait, during which she shot the men a wicked smile, she started to chew.

The men winced as they could hear the crunching from inside of her mouth, even at Burt's paltry size. It was horrific, how easily and gleefully this evil young woman munched upon a fellow human being. The only solace that Richard could take was that Burt's death was a quick albeit ghastly one.

Of course, at Burt's size, it did not take long for him to be completely mashed up into bits, and so Valerie soon swallowed whatever was left of him down into her system. Then, with her other hand, she took a hold of the wine glass--holding it by its underside stem between her fingers--and sipped a bit of the beverage from within.

"Shit, whatdowedo?" Jake wondered aloud. "We hafta get outta here!"

"What's the point?" Lonnie retorted. "She'll just get us again. We can't get away from this." There was clear fear mixed with contempt in his voice.

"That's right," Valerie said as she returned the wine glass to the table. "The sooner you all behave, the sooner you will all be in my belly. Now, who's next?"

Lonnie gritted his teeth in anger. "You bitch..."

Valerie grinned slightly. "Looks like we have a volunteer."

Despite his words, Lonnie did in fact try to run from the approaching chopsticks, which covered more distance via the air than his tiny feet could carry on the plate. Before he could even reach the edge, the brown-haired stock-broker was plucked into the air and, like Burt before him, was dunked into the bowl of sauce.

"A chocolate-coated vanilla wafer..." Valerie mused as she brought Lonnie towards her lips. "Let's see if you're as tasty as that sounds!"

With that, Valerie bit at Lonnie held by the pair of sticks, snatching him from them and taking the unlucky man into her mouth. Again, after a brief stall, he too was chewed on, his frail, helpless body being brutally masticated by her comparably-powerful teeth. Valerie vocalized subtle sounds of satisfaction while she continually reduced Lonnie into mush within her mouth.

Jake was aghast. "Oh my god... This really is it..." He fell to his knees, and broke down into tears; this display from the formerly-bulldoggish attorney nearly made Richard tear up as well of his own impending demise.

After all, like the other men, Richard had his own long life to live through. He had just been promoted to sales manager, and his ladder still had steps to climb. He had tentative plans to tour Europe and Asia. He was looking forward to becoming an uncle, as his sister's child was due in a month. He was also in the process of helping to plan his buddy's bachelor party, as well as serving as the best man in the subsequent wedding. There was a cute secretary who was recently hired that he wanted to take out on a date at some point, and see where it went.

He should have ignored Valerie's advances at Harlow's, the bar that he sometimes went to to ease the stress of the day. Even though she looked like a typical young Asian American woman--not unlike the many intelligent and ambitious ones he had repeated contact with throughout college and in his corporate life--deep down he could feel that something was off about her. But his mind below his waist made him shrug off those warnings, and now look where that had gotten him.

"Goddammit, why didn't I just leave when I was supposed to?" Richard muttered to himself, just as Valerie had finished swallowing Lonnie.

"Oh, he was," she she vibrantly stated as she took another sip of her drink. "That's two down. It's a shame that I don't have more of you to munch on. You guys don't last too long." She sighed. "Oh well, guess that means I have to make this special."

Again, her chopsticks approached the plate, upon which the remaining two men watched her nervously. There was now a 50/50 chance that either of them would be next, and her hand stopped halfway to the plate as her eyes shot back-and-forth from the both of them.

"Now the question is," she said, "Which one of you do I eat next? Hmm..." She seemingly pondered this in her head as her chopsticks joined in on switching its aim from Richard to Jake and then back again and again. "Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate or vanilla?"

The men did not say anything; no matter who was picked next, the other would follow immediately after. It was a pointless argument to even consider debating.

Her gaze fell upon Jake, and she smiled. "Chocolate is my favorite flavor. ...Which is why I'm gonna save you for last."

Richard's heart sank as her eyes shifted to him, right before the chopsticks in her right hand pounced on him. He did not try to fight it; he allowed himself to be taken up from the plate and carried into the air.

"Cute and blond," Valerie mused. "Candy would be really jealous of me right now."

Like the previous two men, Richard was moved over to the bowl of chocolate syrup, which from his position he could now get a good look of. The dark brown sauce only filled a third of the bowl, though even that seemed more than enough for this evil woman to consume the remaining men with.

He was not given much time to marvel at it, for he was very quickly dipped into the bowl. The sweet, sugary sauce was forced into his nostrils and mouth, and despite closing his eyes right before impact, he could still feel some of it nonetheless infiltrating his eyelids. Still submerged inside of the pool, Richard held his breath as he was briefly moved around inside by the chopsticks--perhaps to coat him with as much sauce as possible--before he was finally pulled from the thick sauce. He coughed and hacked as he struggled to catch his breath, while chocolate poured from his body and dripped back down into the bowl. He did his best to wipe some of it from his face, though all he accomplished was moving it around due to his hands also being wet with the fluid.

He was brought closer to her face, in particular her mouth's pinkish lips. Seeing her massive face so up close made him tremble with more fear than before. He was nothing more than helpless prey, just about to be consumed by its predator.

"In you go," those massive lips spoke, before fully separating and taking him inside of its dark, humid cavern.

He was dropped upon a soft, damp surface--her tongue, no doubt--as the air around him smelled of a putrid mix of vegetables, meat, and chocolate. Once he was left in complete darkness--so black that he could not even see his hand right in front of his face--he braced himself for his violent end, expecting the tongue to transport him onto her teeth and crush him to bits.

Instead, he found himself being rolled and tossed around by the wet appendage. It rubbed him against the roof of her mouth, dashed him against her soft cheeks--narrowly avoiding her teeth--and briefly pinned him below it in the poll of liquid at the bottom of her mouth. Through this, the coat of chocolate was exchanged with a coat of saliva. It was clear that she was toying with him, savoring every bit of him before she made the final crunch. Richard wished that she would just get it over with and end his misery.

He soon found himself dropped back on the tongue's surface, where after a brief pause, the tongue pushed him against the mouth's ceiling and started to move him backwards. Lying there, he wondered just where the tongue was trying to take him, until the decline he started feeling with his legs gave him a clue. Before he could react, he felt himself falling down into a deep, warm pit.

He screamed while he slid down a damp, flesh cylinder, her esophagus. Meaning, he knew just where he was headed, alive. It seemed that rather than chew him up like Burt and Lonnie, she instead opted to swallow him whole. His final horror had only just begun.

Indeed, he eventually found himself freefalling into a much larger chamber, before hitting a pool of liquid that immediately started stinging him severely. Richard screamed in complete agony as the stomach acid ate away his flesh, instinctively trying to swim to safety, even though he knew that there was no such thing. The pain was so excruciating that he could think of nothing else.

Soon, he went into shock and passed out.

~~~

Valerie sipped some of her cherry juice from the wine glass she had set besides her plate. Pretty sweet, just how she liked it. Not just the juice, but her small treats as well.

After munching on the first two men, she had decided to swallow the last two alive. Richard--she believed that was his name--did not appear to put up much of a fight, both after she picked him up with her chopsticks, and after he was imprisoned within her mouth. In fact, once she had stopped toying with him, he was so immobile that she thought that he had died, which would have been disappointing; after all, it's more fun when they struggle, just as the first two men did before her teeth broke them. However, the screams she heard from within her body after swallowing him made her crack a smile.

"Ah! This is nice," she purred as she put the glass back onto the table.

Her eyes then met with the last man, Jack. Or Jake. Whatever, she thought.

Like Richard, the handsome Black man was in complete despair. Having fallen onto his knees, she could see the tears streaming down his forlorn face. It was clear that he had come to terms with his fate; it was a look that she had seen all too many times, and each time it had the same effect on her.

It made her delighted.

"Alright, my chocolate treat," Valerie said as her chopsticks reached for him. "It's finally your turn. Hope you're ready!"

Again, like Richard, he did not fight or struggle; he allowed himself to be taken by the thin, twin sticks, his limbs hanging as lifeless as his will to live. She dunked him into the chocolate sauce within the small bowl besides the plate, swirled him around inside to cake on as much of the syrup as she could--carefully so that she did not lose him to the thick liquid--before pulling him back out, allowing the excess syrup to fall back into the bowl.

"Double chocolate..." Valerie cooed, before pulling him closer to her mouth. "Like I said before, I saved the best for last. Hope you make it worth it!"

As the ends of the chopsticks holding onto the tiny man approached her mouth, her lips opened and then closed right back onto the tips of the sticks. She suckled on them a bit, snatching off not only Jake but the residual chocolate coated onto the sticks as well. After pulling the sticks out from her mouth and placing them back onto the table--she had no more need for them--her tongue took in the sweet chocolate taste of the syrup as well as the man still lying on the appendage. He was not making any more than the slightest movements. What a shame, she thought. She wished that he still had a will to live, to fight even at his last moments before she took it all away.

Maybe next time, she thought.

Valerie savored as much of the defeated man as she could as he was rolled and swished around by her tongue, spreading more of that chocolate coating nearly everywhere within. He was so sweet and tasty that she fought the urge to chew on him instead of going through with her original plan.

It was a good thing that she did, because at that moment, the man suddenly sprung to life and started screaming and flailing his limbs. It seemed as if the will to live had not completely left him after all. She chuckled in delight, for it meant that she could toy with her food a while longer before giving it its final plunge.

He fought against her tongue as it very easily overpowered him, pressing him against the roof of her mouth, against the soft walls of her cheeks, rubbing them against the backsides of her teeth, and pinning him underneath the wet appendage. She could feel his tiny fists beating against it, to which she responded by using it to smack him around further.

After spending a bit of time literally playing with her food, she decided that it was time to end it. It was getting late, and she still had her own personal plans for the night.

She worked the man to the back of her mouth with her tongue, though he still resisted it as much as he could. Perhaps he knew just what was about to happen to him and was making one final push to save his own hide.

Ultimately, his efforts came to naught, as he was pushed to the back of her mouth, and then swallowed completely. She could hear his screaming and yelling from within herself as he went down, down to where more pain and torment awaited him, as if he was being sent down to the deepest bowels of Hell itself.

How appropriate, she thought as she took her wine glass again and drunk what was left of her sweet red beverage. To the men, she must have been like the Devil itself, free to make their lives hell with no hope of God to rescue them from their torment. Or perhaps God had sent them to her for punishment. Either way, she was more than content with the role she had in those tiny men's short lives.

Once the juice was consumed as well, Valerie set the glass back down onto the table, and let out a hearty burp.

"That was a nice dinner," she complemented to herself as she wiped her lips with her napkin. "...And a great dessert."



------>

Vignette #3 - Podophobe

Marco breathed in the fresh air of the mid-spring climate. Drawing it into his lungs always felt great, after being cooped up in his cubicle all morning. Indeed, it was now his lunch hour, an hour that he could spend doing whatever he wanted before he had to get back to the grind.

Of course, the main thing he had on his mind at that point was getting something to eat.

The city streets were litter with people, young and old, and most of whom likely had the same idea as he had. In fact, some were already carrying their own food purchases, some even holding enough for a small office gathering. Observing all of this made his mouth water even more, even if he could not see what kind of food they had.

On his way towards his own food stop of choice, he saw two young, very beautiful women approaching from the opposite direction, both of them engaged in a conversation with each other. Indeed, they were very attractive, blond, lean, youthful figures with decently-sized busts underneath their casual Friday, springtime attire. In any other case, Marco would have definitely stopped to chat or even flirt with them; who knows, it could have been the potential start of a new relationship.

Unfortunately, there was one problem, and it was one he noticed right away when they were still rather far away from him.

Both of them were wearing sandals.

And even worse, they were wearing those very revealing flat thong sandals that practically exposed almost the entirety of their feet.

He grimaced as they approached, but he tried not to make it obvious; that said, it appeared that the women were so engrossed in their own conversation that they did not pay him any mind, and they bypassed each other without incident.

"Women should have more class than that," Marco muttered as he continued on his way.

Those two ladies were far from the only ones exposing their feet. One quick look around the area would reveal that many of the women--and even a handful of men--were wearing sandals of some kind; even some of the women in his workplace were wearing sandals of their own. It was as if they awaited the very first opportunity for warm weather to toss their real shoes to the side and don these lazy, feet-baring abominations. Along with the blazing heat and the swarm of insects, it was one of the sure signs that summer was on its way, and like the heat and the insects, the sandals were what he hated most about the season. It would only get worse from there on, and he'd have to endure it all for several months before all three went away for a while.

If it were up to him, he would ban all sandals in public, except near the water. And even then, there were water shoes that kept feet hidden until it was time for a swim. The more he thought of it, the more he felt that there was almost no excuse for sandals and flip-flops and the like to be worn in the public at all.

...But he was getting off-track from his real duty: finding a meal. He would just have to try to ignore everyone else's feet while he ate. ...Or take it back to his cube and eat there.

~~~

Hours later, night had long since fallen. After a long day at the office, Marco felt the need to unwind. Though he did spend some time at his apartment after leaving his work, he ultimately decided that his Friday should be more fun than just lying around and watching whatever he could find on Netflix.

He paid his Uber driver the rider's fee before exiting the car. As the driver departed, Marco turned his attention on the building right in front of him, known as JJ's House. Loud music could be heard from inside the night club, as more people made their way inside, some in groups of three or more. Marco knew that, if it was not already packed already, it would soon become all but impossible to get inside in a timely manner, and soon there would be a line, and a bouncer. Therefore, he hurried inside.

As expected, the interior was full of people, all of whom were mingling, dancing, drinking, and otherwise soaking in the atmosphere. The club was so packed that he almost felt like a sardine in a tin case; moving around was rather difficult without shoving past some of the people in his way. He hoped that no one took it the wrong way and started a confrontation; he had seen something similar occur before, and the last thing he wanted was some meathead throwing punches at him.

The DJs were playing some of the hypest music they could get their hands on, and the music was blaring so loudly that he almost could not hear himself think. However, his thoughts were not completely drowned out, and he had but one real goal in mind: to find a nice lady to chat with and see where the night took them. Looking around, he indeed would have his pick of the litter.

Of course, he was cognizant of the ladies' choice in footwear. Due to how packed the club was, scoping this out proved to be somewhat difficult, but from what he could observe, a good portion of the women were wearing heeled, strappy sandals; quite disappointing, he thought. Even worse, some were even bold enough to completely shed their shoes and dance barefoot on a floor that was undoubtedly stained with vomit or other unpleasantness. How foul; to think that there were actually creeps and weirdos who liked feet. How anyone could find those dirty hooves attractive boggled his mind, though he supposed that they were creepy weirdos for a reason.

Nonetheless, he made a mental note to not even bother with any women who had their feet exposed. If she did not have enough self-respect to keep her feet hidden, then she was clearly not the woman for him. He knew that that would greatly reduce his options--and there were times where he went home alone--but he had manage to succeeded before, and he knew he would do so again.

Before he would scope the place out even further, he wanted to get a drink into his system.

As he headed to the bar, his attention was caught by a nice pair of feminine legs seated at a stool there. Even better, these legs were donning a pair of brown wedge pumps. Looking upward, past her white skirt and brown shirt, he found a very attractive young Asian woman, enjoying a drink.

"Why, hello there~!" Marco said to himself in a rather enticing tone. To think that he would have found a potential target so soon.

Her attention was drawn elsewhere, particularly towards a tall African American man chatting with a curvy blond woman. She sipped from her glass as she leered at the man, though as his back was turned on her, he had no idea of the look she was giving him. Was this man special to her? No, Marco thought; he doubted a man would be so bold as to flirt with another woman while his girlfriend was less than ten feet away from him. Perhaps she was waiting for her opportunity to take him for herself? That seemed more likely, though it was clear that, at least at the moment, the tall man had no interest in her.

That meant that it was time for Marco to make his move.

"If you keep staring at him like that, you'll burn off the back of his skull," Marco said as he reached the bar.

His words took the young lady by surprise, as she turned to face him. "Ah, you scared me!" Then she chuckled to herself. "I guess I was making it too obvious, huh?"

"A friend of yours?"

She shook her head. "I don't even know the guy. I was kinda waiting for him to stop talking with that blond girl, but they've been at it for over ten minutes. I guess I should give up."

"I'm surprised that they didn't notice," Marco stated. "But there's plenty of fish in the sea. Just gotta know when to reel 'em in."

"Right..." She then started staring into his face, her dark brown eyes almost getting lost in his. "Maybe I'll toss my hook in your direction."

'That was fast,' Marco thought to himself. "Hey, you're a prize catch yourself. Honestly, I think that guy is missing out ignoring a cutie like you."

The woman giggled. "Yeah, you're right. And you're pretty cute, too. ...Though you're more my friend's type than mine."

"Oh..." Marco felt a big dejected.

She placed her hand upon the side of his waist. "But I'm pretty open-minded, and I'm interested in getting to know you." She smiled.

"Sweet," Marco smiled as well, pulling out the empty stool besides her own and sitting down in it. "My name's Marco."

"I'm Valerie," she introduced. "I wanna know, out of all the frankly more attractive girls here, what drew you to me?"

"You want an honest answer?" Marco asked.

Valerie smirked. "You don't have Yellow Fever, do you?"

"No, nothing like that. It's... Well, you're not wearing sandals."

Valerie's eyes widened in bewilderment. "Huh? You don't like sandals?"

"It's more that I hate feet," Marco answered. "They're dirty and stinky and look ugly. They're best kept hidden away from view, but sandals defy all of that. These women around here don't get it, but you're a pleasant breath of fresh air."

"Oh..." Valerie sipped a bit from her glass. "Well, I'm glad I was able to buck the trend. I mean, if I hadn't, we wouldn't be here talking, right?" She smiled, and Marco could see a hint of rosiness in her cheeks, even with the multicolored lights of the club.

"You sure did," Marco replied with a grin, before turning to the barkeeper. "Barkeep! Get my friend here another drink. I'll pay for it."

"Alright," the barkeeper nodded, before turning to Valerie. "What will you have, miss?"

"Another lime martini, please," she replied.

"I'll take a Guinness," Marco told him.

"Coming right up," the barkeeper affirmed before he turned to prepare their drinks.

Marco and Valerie kept chatting it up, learning more about each other and trading flirtatious remarks. Valerie even made a few jokes at the expense of the other women in the club, which Marco found rather amusing. She seemed like a down-to-Earth person, not a diva or anything of the sort. Even if he was "not her type", as she mentioned before, he could tell that she was making a clear exception for him.

Once they finished their drinks, they both moved to the dance floor and spent quite a bit of time dancing with each other to the club music. It seemed that they really got into the spirit of the club's atmosphere, as they were grinding on each other rather intensely, though compared to everyone else, they did not particularly stand out much. After some time, they moved to a back hall where their passions led to them making out with one another, with Marco pressing her against the wall as their tongues tangoed with each other.

Needless to say, this eventually led to them leaving the club entirely and taking their party elsewhere. Namely: Valerie's house, at her suggestion.

~~~

Marco laid on Valerie's queen-sized bed, his naked body trying to catch its breath after the sexual workout he and Valerie had partaken in. She was on the bed beside him, and as he glanced over at her naked, fair-skinned, petite body, he saw that she too was exhaling intensely. ...Of course, just hearing her breathing could have told him that.

As far as Marco was concerned, it was a successful night. He not only got what he went out to look for, but also found it in the very attractive--and very carnal, as he learned--Valerie. In truth, he only planned for a one-night-stand, but after bonding with Valerie, he felt that perhaps this could be the start of something more.

"You're amazing," Marco complemented. "I have to admit, I didn't think you'd be so... wild."

"Why's that?" Valerie asked.

"Well, you seem so tiny and frail."

"Hey, you can't judge a book by its cover. Big things come in small packages."

Marco chuckled. "Alright, that's enough of the clichés."

"You know what I find funny," Valerie said. "You left your socks on."

She drew his attention to his feet, where indeed they were clad in his white socks. Besides his size 14-men's pair, Valerie's own size 5-women's feet were bare, though he did his best to ignore that fact.

"Well, I'd be a hypocrite if I wanted other people to hide their feet but not hide my own," Marco said. "I don't even like looking at them. I even sleep with my socks on most of the time."

"Wow, that's interesting. Sounds like you're foot-phobic than anything."

"Hm... Maybe. But anyway..." He turned his attention back to her face. "I had a really fun time with you tonight."

Valerie smiled. "So did I!"

"Sweet. Maybe we could hook up again. Or go on a proper date sometime?"

Valerie stared at him briefly, before chuckling. "Yeah, we're going to be spending a lot of time together."

Marco smiled. "Well, alright then. I guess that's a date!"

Valerie chuckled again, and the two of them shared another kiss before lying back onto the bed. They were both in high spirits; of course, why shouldn't they? They had found a new potential partner in each other, and it was clear that this would not be the last time they would see each other. Marco was looking forward to learning more about Valerie beyond the bedroom. Who knows; though it was way too early to be thinking of it, perhaps they could truly go the distance, traverse the road of life together.

As Marco stared at the white ceiling of her dark room, he started to daydream all of the things he and Valerie could experience together. Yeah, call it hunch, but he knew that she would be the one.

Suddenly, a flash of bluish white light filled his vision. It took him by surprise; was it lightning? The weather forecast did not mention any storms in the area. However, what was even stranger was the tingling feeling his entire body was feeling at the moment.

Then, he noticed it: the room was expanding.

"What!?" Marco quickly shot up from his lying position as he nervously watched as everything around him grew. He did not know what to make of it; had he fallen asleep at some point, and was he dreaming? And how long had he been out?

"What's going on?!" He turned to Valerie, who had been very strangely silent during this ordeal.

He was shocked to see that not only was she completely calm, but that she was also smiling, even smirking. The every-growing woman was reclining on her side, as her right hand was stretched towards him; the tip of her index finger was glowing with a similar light as the flash that he had seen seconds before.

It seemed that she was the culprit of whatever was affecting him, of what was--dare he think it--shrinking him.

"W-what are you doing!?" Marco shouted to her.

She did not answer; instead, she kept watching as his body continued to rapidly dwindle in size. Marco himself became extremely frightened at this turn of events. What was going on? What was going through the head of this young woman who until then had been a pretty pleasant soul to be around?

Soon enough, the room's growth came to an end, and he found himself sitting upon the now gigantic bed which looked more like a vast plain than what it truly was. That was to say nothing of Valerie herself, her body now truly massive compared to his. The glowing on her finger faded as she let her hand rest on the bed, and she still had that same smug smile on her face.

"What did you do to me!?" Marco angrily yelled at her. "Change me back!!"

"Oh, Marco," she purred as she rolled over towards him.

He went to brace himself from her body's weight, but found no harm being done to him. As he opened his eyes, he found Valerie hanging over him, her arms bending at their elbows as they kept her propped above him, her dark hair hanging down from scalp.

"Like I said," she spoke, "we're going to be spending a lot of time together." She let out a sinister laugh, one that made Marco's heart sink in fear. All he could do was scream as her hand reached for him.

~~~

It had been hours; Marco knew that because he could see the light of the sun gradually illuminating Valerie's room and banishing the darkness of night. In all that time did Marco not sleep even a little bit; his mind was a whirlpool of emotions and questions that kept him up all night. Why did Valerie shrink him? What plans does she have for the two of them? How long does she intend to keep him captive? Will she release him when she's done with him, or will she keep him imprisoned forever?

He shuddered upon thinking on the last question; he had his own life to live, and he did not want to spend it trapped inside of this woman's home. He wanted to escape- he KNEW he had to escape, but how could he do so? The walls of the cardboard box he was currently being held in were far taller than he could ever climb. Perhaps he could claw himself out, though he would probably accomplish more to skin off the tips of his fingers than make any headway through the box.

Although he could not see Valerie, he could hear--and feel the vibrations of--her moving about the house, first as she got off of her bed and walked around her room, leaving and returning as she saw fit. His stomach growled; he had not eaten anything since before he arrived at JJ's, and he had already relieved himself inside of the box. He wondered if Valerie would feed him; so far, it did not seem that she was very cognizant of his well-being; if she truly cared, she would have fed him by then. ...Then again, if she truly cared, she would not have imprisoned him to begin with.

It seemed that more hours had passed before Valerie returned to her room again. He listened as her footsteps carried her towards the bed, the sounds of the tremors becoming louder with each step, until it seemed as if they stopped right outside of his box. He looked up to see the tips of her fingers appear from beyond the box and grip it by the top of the wall. He then felt motion as the hand pulled the box completely out into the light, where the now-clothed Valerie was waiting for him. The playful smile she bore on her face made him even angrier.

"Good afternoon, Marco!" she greeted. "You have a good rest last night?"

"Valerie, this isn't funny," Marco protested as he stood up. "Change me back and let me go home!"

Valerie shook her head. "Not gonna happen, pal. If I did that, you'd just tell on me and I'd get arrested. There's no way I'm going to go to jail."

"Honest, if you let me go, I'll just forget this all happened and we can go our separate ways."

"I don't trust you. But then again, if I didn't break for the others, why would you be any exception?"

What did she say? "Others"? "Wait, there's more!?" Marco exclaimed.

Valerie nodded. "Yeah, there were, but you don't need to worry about them. Right now, it's just you and me..."

She then reached into the box with her right hand. Marco tried to run away, but soon found himself being plucked from the box and carried off into the air. Still, he struggled and flailed about as Valerie stood upright and walked a short distance to her bed, whereon she sat on its side and released him onto the carpeted floor in front of her bare feet.

Yes, her bare feet. Marco could not help but look at them now, for they were massive. This pair of utterly-wretched peds were now big enough to completely overpower and destroy him; he quickly shook that thought out of his head.

"Now," Valerie said above him. "I bet you're pretty hungry right now, right?"

Marco did not respond. Or rather, he did not know how to respond.

"Well, I'll give you some food I have, but you have to do one thing for me." She flashed a devilish smile. "You have to kiss my toes."

"WHAT!?" Marco exclaimed in sheer shock. There was no way he would do such a thing. "You're not serious!! Why the hell would I do that!?"

"Yes, I'm very serious," Valerie replied. "As for why you'd do it... Well, you can ask those other guys I mentioned." She tapped her right foot upon the floor.

Marco's mouth dropped in horror. "Wait... You don't mean..."

"If you don't want to end up like them--if you want to eat, even--you better do as I said."

"Please don't!" Marco pleaded. "I'll do anything else, just don't make me do that!!"

"That's the deal. Either you take it, or you'll face my wrath."

"Please, can't you think of anything-"

Valerie stomped the floor with her right foot, the vibrations being such that Marco nearly lost his balance. "Do you want me to stomp on you?"

Marco nervously looked up at Valerie staring him down from above, to her feet waiting right before him, and then right back up to her face again, it wearing an expectant, serious expression upon it. She was not playing around; she truly wanted him to go through with her task, even after he had told her his own aversions towards feet. Or perhaps it was because he told her about them that she is demanding that he service her feet.

"Now," Valerie said with a clear sternness in her tone.

Marco winced as her demand struck his ears. He truly hated feet, with every fiber of his being; just the thought of putting his mouth on them made him sick to his stomach. And yet... If he wanted to live, he had no but to play by her rules.

And so, he slowly staggered over to the big toe of her left foot, his socks dragging against the floor, a sign of the little energy he had in his body, due to both his fatigue and his sheer reluctance in carrying out the task that Valerie had ordered of him. He truly did not want to go through with this, but he knew that he had no choice in the matter, not when the alternative was the gruesome end of his life.

At last, he finally reached her toe, it nail left unpolished along with the rest of them. After a brief hesitation, he forced his face onto the flesh of her digit, puckered his lips, and sheepishly planted a kiss on it. He heard Valerie chuckle slightly as he peppered on more half-hearted kisses upon her toe, his spirit clearly not into the act.

"C'mon, you can do better than that," Valerie said from above. "And don't focus on just that one toe, either. You need to get to all of them."

Marco kept going on, pressing his lips upon her flesh for slightly longer periods than his initial kisses. Once he was done with the first toe, he moved on to the smaller ones, doing the same with those, kissing its skin on the front and sides of it and even pecking her nails.

"Don't be afraid to go between my toes," Valerie said. "And how about some licking while you're at it."

It seemed that her task just got even more disgusting. Licking? Going between her toes? If he was his regular size, he would not have stood for any of this.

Nonetheless, he did as she demanded, not only kissing her foot but also licking her skin as well. Like with the kissing, he started with weak taps with the tip of his tongue, until he worked up the nerve to lap upon her foot like a dog happy to see its owner. He squeezed between her gigantic toes and worked the flesh within. Tried as he might, his nostrils also pulled in the slight odor of her foot, and in combination with his acts, he felt his stomach churning. He did what he could to keep whatever was inside down.

One-by-one, he slowly worked on each of her left foot's digits, until he finished with her smallest toe at the end. Then, he half-heartedly ran over to her other foot, starting with its big toe, where the process began anew with Marco kissing and licking on and between each of her right foot's toes. All the while, Valerie giggled at this display and even occasionally wiggled her toes, perhaps to make his task even more difficult than it was. Marco of course hated everything about this, hated that he was forced into doing such a lowly task that no one but those foot-freaks enjoyed, and he hated Valerie for making him do it.

Finally, after a long and arduous spell, he completed his literal lip-service of her right pinky toe, completing the disgusting task that he had forced upon him. He back away from her foot and fell onto his bottom, the fibers of the carpet directly touching his bare skin. He fought to catch his breath while he tried to endure the taste of her skin that was stuck on his tongue. All the while, he shot her a furious look with his eyes, his mind still coming to terms with the fact that he was made to do such a nauseating chore.

"Not bad," Valerie said as she looked down on her feet, its toes somewhat damp with his saliva. "But... You missed a spot." She pointed towards her right foot. "Right there between my toes. Go on."

Marco grunted as he stood up and once again pulled himself over to her foot. He moved in between her right foot's big and second toes and began to kiss and lick the skin once more.

Suddenly, the digits clamped onto his body and lifted him up into the air.

"Wait, what are you doing!?" Marco cried out to Valerie, whose mouth was curved into an amused half-smile. He tried to pull himself out from her grip, but the pressure upon his body started to increase.

Soon, he started to scream out in pain as her toes squeezed his tiny body a bit more tightly than before. It was extremely painful; he could even feel his ribs bending under the pressure. Was she going to kill him after all? Even after the torment he had been through before? This woman, Valerie, was clearly out of her mind, a true psychopath who took joy in the pain of others. More than ever, he regretted speaking with her at all at JJ's the night before.

Mercifully, however, her hold soon weakened, and then her toes separated enough so that he freely fell down between them, plummeting towards the floor. However, rather than the soft carpet, he hit a hard surface; seeing the cardboard walls from before revealed that she had dropped him back into his cardboard box prison.

Marco clutched his torso in an attempt to nurse the aching pain he was feeling, as Valerie stood back up and stood over the box, looking right back down at him. This was the first time he had seen her from her full height at ground level, and it was a terrifying sight indeed. This truly was a woman who could have easily ended him like he was nothing but a bug at her feet.

"Alright, I think that's enough for now," Valerie said. "As promised, I'm gonna get you some food and some water. Hope you like ham and bread, because that's what's on the menu." She giggled.

Marco did nothing but glare at her with clear hatred in his watery eyes.

"So hang tight, and I'll be back with your meal." With that, she departed, her tremor-like footsteps becoming weaker as she ventured further from her room.

Marco remained on the ground, his body aching and his ego bruised. He still could not fully wrap his head around what was happening. How could this happen to him? How could this happen to anyone? Did he have any hope of returning to his own life? Or would his life end within the walls of her house?

His stomach growled in hunger. Perhaps food would provide a little of a reprieve from this nightmare. However, he still bore the aftertaste of Valerie's feet on his tongue. How could he choke down the food when the memory of the foul ordeal he had been through was still fresh in his mind? And would it be the last time he would have to orally service her feet? More than likely not, he determined; she could be coming up with even worse tasks at that very moment. Thinking about being so close to her feet over and over again made him sick, even physically. Before, he had to force what little was in his gut from coming up and spewing all over while he was kissing and licking Valerie's feet, and he fought hard to keep it down.

...But it seemed that that internal upheaval had returned, and this time he had not the strength to fight it.

And so, he allowed himself to vomit onto the cardboard floor.



------>

Vignette #4 - Race to the Finish

Valerie loved this. She loved the sight of a bug scurrying away from her, fleeing in an effort to preserve its own life, lest it be squashed underneath her powerful foot. She loved it even more when said "bug" was not a bug at all, but was in fact a tiny man, his former proud stature stripped away from him along with his clothes, being left at a naked 1 inch tall.

This man, Terrence--she actually did remember this one's name--was in many ways her type: tall, fit, handsome, and Black; of course, at the moment, the first on that list, "tall" meant nothing. Once he proved his mettle in bed two weeks ago, she made her next move and reduced him to a paltry size, toying with and torturing him since then.

For Valerie, this chase was just the latest in the "games" that she played with them, but this time, there were dire consequences if he lost...

"Oh, watch out!" Valerie warned as her flip-flop-clad foot rose from the kitchen floor and targeted the running man below. "Looks like my foot has you right in its sight!" Indeed, at present, she could not see him at all from behind her foot.

Then, she stomped down. Surely, Terrence would not have lost the game already, right?

Not at all, it turned out, as right before her foot hit the floor, the tiny man scurried out from beneath its hungry shadow, just narrowly avoiding death. However, the wind her foot kicked up nearly blew him off of his feet, but he quickly recovered and continued to run.

"Not bad, Terrence," Valerie said. "Now you just have to keep it up."

To this, her other foot went on the attack, this one hanging a bit lower as it moved over towards him. Terrence looked upward and yelped as it bore down on him. Valerie chucked to herself and decided to hold back, pressing her foot down behind him. The sound of her flip-flop meeting the floor still made him flinch in fear.

"That was a close one!" she teased. "But if you want to taste sweet freedom, you'll have to do better than that."

"Please!!" Terrence shouted up at her as he kept running. "Please don't kill me!! I'll do anything you wan- ACK!!!" He leapt out of the way just as Valerie made another attempt to splatter him.

"Please stop begging me to spare your life," Valerie scolded as she pulled her foot back. "I told you what you have to do to win, do you better do your best to make it to the door."

She was referring to her house's back door, located in the kitchen. Right now, it was securely locked and its curtains, like all the others in the kitchen, were drawn to a close, letting little of the sunlight outside through their fabric. She had promised the little man that if he made it to the back door, she would open it and let him go free.

...Of course, she had no intention of following through on such a bargain; after all, she could not risk even the smallest chance of her getting caught. Either the man did not know that, or he wanted to cling to any small chance he had at escaping with his life.

Regardless, Terrence was nowhere near his destination.

She stood by and watched as the pathetic, naked man scurried across the floor, his feet running at full speed in their effort to carry him to the quote-on-quote "finish line". Valerie was actually impressed by how much stamina he had in him, considering the fact that he had eaten very little since his capture, not to mention the bruised state of his toned body, courtesy of her own brutal actions over the past two weeks. The will to live truly was a remarkable one, she thought.

"You're pretty fast for a bug," Valerie commented, before she once again started stalking after him. "...But can you outrun Valzilla? RWAR!!"

Clawing her hands and making playful roaring sounds like a stereotypical movie monster, she stomped after Terrence, using both of her feet one after the other to make repeated attempts to crush him. Her stomps were slow enough so that he managed to dodge each one just before it stepped down, his athletic body making swift turns once he found himself within its sinister shadow.

"If you don't run faster, Valzilla will squish you under her big feet," Valerie said as the man escaped against just as her left sandal hit the surface.

Terrence at that point was running in a zig-zag fashion across the floor; with the door far ahead of him, perhaps he knew that any other direction would only be a waste of time. Of course, this zig-zag pattern only served to keep him right in her path.

"Like right now! RAWR!!!" She made a hard stomp with her right foot, accompanied by the slapping sound of her flip-flop as it struck the hard floor. Though rather than crush him, she instead opted to just narrowly miss the man, who was taken by such a surprise that he fell backwards in shock.

The tiny man shuddered as he looked up at her; even at his size, she could see the sheer fear in his eyes, the soul of a man who was desperate to keep hold of his life.

"You're wide open," Valerie said as her right foot lifted off the floor and moved the short distance over to where he was. As expected, Terrence wasted no time and got up running once again; Valerie did not bother stepping down, and instead calmly brought her foot back to its twin.

In considering his size, he did seem to be making decent progress towards his goal, even if he was still less than halfway there at that point. If Valerie wanted to, she could have simply ended this game with her first stomp, but she was taking a sort of dark joy from making this man's life hell even now. Giving him even the slightest glimmer of hope before she would tear it all away from him.

After taking a few small steps after him--completely catching up with him in mere seconds what took him minutes to run--she nudged his back with the tip of her flip-flop, knocking him to the ground. Then, before he could get back to his feet, she lowered the same foot onto his body, the foam treads of her sandal making contact with his tiny body.

Valerie could hear the man scream from underneath; perhaps that he thought that she intended to crush him then and there. However, she was only exerting just enough force to keep him safely pinned underfoot.

"Oh, shit," Valerie said. "Looks like it's over for you. Valzilla's gonna pop you like a juicy black grape."

She heard Terrence scream and plead even louder than before; hearing his frantic cries for mercy made her crack a smile; she could have easily squashed him then and there if so desired. In fact, she was fighting the urge at that moment, even pressing down ever so slightly as if her natural instinct was trying to take over.

Rather, she instead kept her foot in place for several minutes, watching her foot and her eager red toes while Terrence screamed and likely fought desperately to free himself from what he believed was certain death. To him, the suspense was terrifying; she could only imagine what was going through his tiny head, why she was stalling in doing her dirty deed, and how long it would take before her foot completely lowered, coming down like a guillotine on the neck of his life.

"...Psych!" Valerie at last removed her foot from Terrence's body, still shivering in terror. He slowly glanced up at her--the fear still in his countenance--and upon getting a look at the dark grin she was flashing him, he almost immediately got back to his desperate run.

"Don't get too comfortable," Valerie warned the man. "You won't be safe until you actually reach the door. I'm still gonna keep trying to flatten you."

"Please, just let me go!" Terrence pleaded. "I wanna see my family again!!"

Valerie shrugged. "Then you better try harder to get there."

"Please!! Just let me go- NOOO!!!" Terrence made a sharp turn to his left avoid Valerie's foot coming down upon him. He almost immediately found himself in the shadow of her other ped, which was primed to turn him into a red paste. He escaped just narrowly; a split second later, and he would had been a goner.

Valerie did not let up; she repeatedly made attempt after attempt to stomp him beneath her sandals, though holding back just enough to miss or allow him to barely escape from certain death, all to prolong this game as far as she could. Even if she already knew what the end result would be.

Despite her own efforts, Terrence had finally crossed the halfway point to his goal. Perhaps he too noticed, as his pace increased somewhat, even as he was dodging Valerie's feet.

"You made it past the halfway mark. Congrats!" she complemented. "...But you still have a long way to go. I wonder if you'll even make it there?"

She stepped over him and then stomped down right in front of his path; seemingly undeterred, he made a shift to his right and ran around her foot.

"I knew that wouldn't work," Valerie commented as she pulled her foot back and watched as the tiny man continued to run away from her, perhaps sensing the brief reprieve that she was giving him at the moment.

In fact, she decided to take a brief break. "Hang tight, insect. I'll be right back."

She walked over to the kitchen sink, next to which was her strainer full of cleaned dishes, few in number. Living alone, it was not as if she needed many of them; she was nowhere near ready to settle down with a mate, and she hardly ever invited family over for dinner, as such a thing was too risky.

Pulling one of her smaller cuts from the strainer, she headed to and then opened the refrigerator, quickly locating the nearly-empty carton of cherry juice. She poured the entirely of its contents into her cup, amounting to a half-full fill, and then--completely disregarding Terrence--walked over to the sink and began to look through the window behind the sink, slightly pulling apart the curtain to do so.

The window was facing right towards the white wooden fence that separated her lot from her neighbor's, but even with her small yard, she was offered a decent enough sight of the world outside. Robins flew into and frolicked within the lush branches of the nearby tree, chirping happily or perhaps aggressively; Valerie could never be sure. As she took repeated sips from her beverage, she watched as a grey squirrel made its way across the lawn, in search of any scrap of food it could find; as long as it stayed away from her trash bin out back, she thought.

All sorts of insects flew and crawled around, though with the window itself shut, they would not be able to get inside of her house. ...Not that she particularly minded; as annoying as they were, they would just serve as yet another pest to squash. Still, the world outside presented all sorts of dangers for a person as small as Terrence; even if he did make it out there, his chances of survival were nil.

As she took another sip from her sweet red juice, a drop of it fell upon her yellow shirt. Kind of a bother, but it was barely noticeable.

Further away, beyond the fence was her neighbor, an older Indian man, mowing his lawn. He was a rather kind man, even if his thick accent made him hard to comprehend at times. Hypothetically, if Terrence did survive the trek through her yard and reach her neighbors', and assuming that they did not unknowingly murder him, she knew that he would be more than willing to help Terrence, and that would be the end of her.

There was no way she would allow that to happen.

After spending a bit over ten minutes staring through the window and savoring her delicious beverage, at last her cup had run dry. She rinsed off the cup with warm water from the faucet, before placing it into the sink. The empty carton, she compressed between her hands and then threw it into the nearby trash bin.

"That was pretty good," Valerie enthused as she closed the curtain back to the way it was before. Then, as she turned around, "Now, to check up on my- Holy crap!!"

Valerie was stunned to see that Terrence had closed the gap to the back door significantly. In fact, on her scale, he was less than three feet away from the proverbial finish line. The little man's pace looked to be even quicker than it had been before, perhaps due to him being so close to his goal.

"Oh hell no!" Valerie rushed over to the man, running around the small wooden table in the room. Her flip-flops made very audible slapping sounds as she ran towards the back door; Terrence of course noticed her approach right away, as he let out a distressed yelp after briefly glancing behind and then forcing himself to run even faster.

Of course, his efforts were for naught, as she not only surpassed him, but also parked herself right in front of the door, somewhat stretching her arms out to cover the wooden monolith; not that it would have mattered to a man as small as Terrence, but it worked to send a message.

"And where do you think you're going?" Valerie said to the tiny man, who skidded to a stop in the face of her overwhelming presence. His body was pouring with sweat; no doubt that he had pushed himself to his limit to make it that far that fast.

"Get out of my way!!" Terrence bravely--or foolishly--barked up at her.

"You're seriously trying to give me orders? Yeah, not gonna happen."

Terrence let out a frustrated howl, and then exploded in a full-speed sprint towards the door behind Valerie. Perhaps he was throwing caution to the wind, having made it so close to the goal; there was no way Valerie was going to let him reach it. She lifted her right foot into the air, and then brought it down upon him. However, she got nothing but the bare floor, as he sped out of its way and avoided being splattered all over the bottom of its sandal. Valerie immediately went for a second stomp with the same foot, and then a third one, but Terrence simply managed to escape each time.

She turned a bit to her side and with her left foot, slid it across the floor towards Terrence, in an attempt to knock him back where he had run from, but due to her slightly lifting the foot from the floor, there was just enough space for Terrence to duck under as her flip-flop passed over him. Recovering quickly, he sped towards the door, now less than a foot away from him.

"Augh, you piece of shit," Valerie said, right before making another attempt at squashing him with her left foot, which also ended in failure as he scurried out from its shadow right before it could destroy him.

Even Valerie had to admit that she was impressed by his agility, though she also found herself getting a bit frustrated with the man's will to live. In only seconds, Terrence would reach his goal and expect his reward, his freedom. This burst of speed showed that he knew that, that he was putting in well past 110% to make it there. As the huge wooden door came within his reach, Terrence hands stretched out in front of him, eager to be free at last.

His tiny fingers just barely made contact with the wood...

...Until Valerie's hand snatched him up from the floor.

"Gotcha!" She triumphantly announced.

She could feel Terrence's small body struggling and fighting within her closed hand, and could even make out the muffled sounds of his yelling and ranting. She stood back up and walked to the center of the kitchen, wherein she unfurled her fingers and observed the tiny man shaking in both fear and anger in her palm.

"Sorry, but you lost," Valerie said to him.

"That's bullshit!!" Terrence angrily shouted. "I made it to the door!! You have to let me go!!"

Valerie tsked with a shake of her head. "Ah, Terrence, you stupid little bug. Did you really think I would just let you leave?"

"Let me go!!" Terrence repeated.

"No," Valerie quickly responded. "You're not going anywhere. You're mine until the end."

"Grrrahh!!!" Terrence snarled. "You fuckin' chink!!"

"It's 'jap'," Valerie coolly corrected.

"What!?"

"I'm Japanese. If you're going to call me a slur, at least use the right one, nigger." She smiled teasingly, to which Terrence gritted his teeth in anger. "You mad? Then do something about it."

After another frustrated yell, Terrence stood to his feet and made what could have been an attempt at leaping off from her hand. However, her other hand caught him with its index finger and thumb, pulling him closer to her face. With Terrence being held there, she got an even closer look at the pathetic man, who shuddered as his angry eyes glared at her.

"I think you need to cool off," Valerie told him, after which she opened her mouth and moved him closer to it.

Terrence screamed and pleaded, fighting and flailing in her grasp, but it did him no good. He was dropped securely onto her tongue, before closing her mouth completely.

Even inside of her mouth, he still yelled at her, but the only answer she had for him was her tongue lashing and rolling him around all around her mouth. She walked around the kitchen, all the while taking great joy in tormenting the struggling man at her tongue's mercy, of which the wet appendage had none. He was dashed against her cheeks, slammed against the roof of her mouth, and pinned beneath the tongue on her jaw, all the while he kept yelling and flailing, and even at one point seemingly punching the tongue or anything else he could.

She always loved the feeling of tiny men inside of her mouth, completely trapped inside of a dark, wet prison. There were many a time where this oral torment would prelude her victim's passage into her stomach, where further pain would await them as they were torn apart by her stomach acid. She was highly tempted to swallow Terrence then and there, to feel his struggling as her esophagus transported him deeper into her body.

Looking down on the pristine white floor, however, she decided to just stick with her original plan. After all, it could use a little blood.

Using her tongue, she pressed the Terrence against her lips inside of her mouth, and then after pursing her lips, she spat him out onto the floor two feet away. The tiny naked man struck the white surface at high speed, his wet body coated with saliva tumbling until he finally landed on his back.

Terrence laid there, breathing in as heavily as he could, as Valerie walked over to him.

"There's all nice and cool," she said as she approached. Terror overtaking his being, he tried to back away from her, but his hand kept slipping in the puddle of saliva around him.

"Please..." he uttered. "Let me go...!"

Valerie shook her head as she placed her hands on her hips. "You're still going on about that? I told you before, you're not getting out of here." She then grinned darkly. "Well, that's not completely true. You'll get out of here, by leaving life itself."

"No...!" Terrence yelled as she lifted her foot and moved it over above him. "Don't!! Please stop!!!"

Valerie cackled; the last thing she saw of Terrence before her foot completely blocked her sight of him was the tiny man holding his arms up in an attempt to ward off her foot. Then, her foot lowered, nice and slowly; her heel met the floor first as the rest of the foot followed, until her toes lowered and started to crunch Terrence beneath them.

"Goodbye, Terrence!" Valerie bid him.

She drew his execution out, relishing in not only the feeling of his body breaking through the thin sole of her sandal also but his screams of sheer agony, before those were eventually silenced as they were completely overtaken by the final wet squelch of his exploding body, which shot out blood from beneath the front end of her flip-flop.

Lifting her heel slightly, her toes pressed down even harder as she twisted her foot from side to side, spending over a minute grinding and tearing Terrence apart beneath her. Soon, the crumbling of his bones gave completely away to a sick gurgling of sticky liquid, a sign that he had been thoroughly pulped.

Once Valerie was satisfied, she removed her foot from what had been her shrunken Black toy, and as expected, found nothing but flattened and shredded flesh and shattered and grounded bones. All within a grisly splatter of a similar shade of red as the polish she wore on her toes. Examining the bottom of her flip-flop, she found more blood and some more flesh, smashed and embedded in the treads of her shoe, joining the dried bits of some of its previous victims already pressed cleanly into the sole.

Valerie let out a sigh of pleasure as she returned her foot to the floor; even moreso than the chase, she loved when she would finally and brutally put and end to her tiny men's futile run. As such, she had been looking forward to squashing Terrence for two weeks, ever since she had first caught him in her net, and he certainly did not disappoint.

In the end, "Valzilla" did indeed pop him like a juicy black grape.



------>

Carrying a stack of documents and folders, Valerie somewhat rushed through the hall of the office at which she was employed. She was not sure why she was in such a hurry; her deadline was the following Friday, well over a week away, and it was not like she had to write a thesis or anything. That said, the sooner she got her assigned project completed, the better.

It was not her first such assignment, nor would it be the last. In a way, she could be considered a sort of pro. If anyone needed help, she was the girl to call. ...Not that many people ever called for her help, but the door was always open. ...Not that her cubicle had a door- Her mind was getting off-track.

She kept a careful hold of her stack as she navigated through the corridor. In just two more turns, she would reach the huge cubicle space that held her own cube.

She made the first turn, and-

"Ah!" She found herself being sent flying backwards onto the carpeted floor, as her documents fell over around her.

"Oh crap!" said a familiar male voice. "I didn't even see you there, Valerie. You alright?"

Valerie looked up to the man that she had bumped into, only to find her heart aflutter when her eyes fell upon none other than Stevie. The handsome young Black man had his hand held out towards her, offering to help her back up.

"Y-yeah," she answered. "It's my fault, I should've watched where I was going." She took his hand in hers, and allowed him to pull her back onto her feet.

"Nah, I was kinda rushing as well," Stevie said. "You at least had these papers and stuff; I don't have an excuse."

"Don't worry about it, Stevie."

Stevie chuckled weakly. "Alright, if you say so... But let me help you pick all this stuff up." To which, he immediately assisted her in retrieving the dozens of sheets of paper and folders. "There's a lot of data and statistics on these sheets. You writing up a report?"

Valerie nodded. "Yeah. Mr. Wegrecki wants me to write up a report and analysis on our finances for the past fifteen years. It's not too hard, but it's a bit time-consuming. I wanna get it out of the way now before he starts breathing down my neck."

"I see. If you need any help, I'm there for you," Stevie offered as he placed several sheets neatly onto the growing stack in Valerie's grasp.

"Wow, you're still kinda new here, but you're already offering to help out us seasoned employees. I think you'll go far here!" Valerie smiled.

"Hah, maybe," Stevie replied as he gathered up the remaining documents and folders. "But for now, I just want to help out my colleagues and make their lives easier." He put the remaining sheets onto the stack that Valerie held. "There!"

"Thanks, Stevie," Valerie said as they both stood up. "I'll take you up on that offer some day, but for now, I have to go at this alone."

"I understand. Whatever gets you through it with the least amount of stress. But if you ever need me, Valerie, I'm all ears." He gave her a friendly smile, to which she returned in kind.

"I'll definitely keep that in mind Stevie," Valerie responded, her cheeks becoming warm with blush. "By the way, you can call me 'Val'."

"You sure?" Stevie confirmed, which she replied with a nod. "Alright, Val. I'll be seeing you around. There's somewhere I have to be."

"See ya," Valerie bid as Stevie rushed past her and headed down the hallway, back in the exact direction where she had come from.

She found her gaze still lingering onto the young man even after he had left her sight.

"What a man..." she swooned.

Even though she lost a few precious minutes, she felt that the exchange was worth it. In fact, any exchange with Stevie was worth it. He was such a friendly, thoughtful man who looked out for those around him; any woman would be lucky to have him, and perhaps one day, that woman would be Valerie herself.

Yes, one day, she would have him all to herself. She very much looked forward to that day, and even fantasized about it at night before falling asleep.

Sometimes, he was but a tiny slave, forced to kiss and lick all parts of her feet for hours on end, well after his tongue dried and his lips became sore. Sometimes, he would be a scurrying bug for her to step on, with her relishing every crunch of his bones as she ground his handsome yet fragile body into the floorboard. Sometimes, he was a tasty chocolate snack, which she would savor inside of her mouth as long as she could before swallowing him alive. Sometimes, he was a living sex toy, with which she made use of his tiny limbs to stimulate the most sensitive parts of her womanhood.

There were a handful of times where the two of them made passionate love together--enjoying the sensual feeling of their warm, tender flesh against one another as their worlds melded into one--and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

...She wondered what that was about.

Regardless, with Valerie's documents safely back in her hands, she resumed her original task, soon quickly heading into the wide office space and into her cubicle in particular. With the morning still young, she wanted to give herself as much time as she could to work on her assignment.


Vignette #5 - Predator

Even hours later, Valerie was still at the top of the world. Her finance project, which she spent the better part of the last two weeks on, turned out to be a rousing success. Her supervisor Mr. Wegrecki was quite impressed with how much detail she had put into it, even noting little things included that others may have overlooked, and the end results lined up perfectly with the organization's current standings.

She was very happy that that weight had been lifted off of her shoulder. After all, she even worked on it at home and on the weekends, totally ignoring her personal life in favor of getting everything together.

After such an endeavor, Valerie felt that she had to reward herself, and thus, she drove herself one county over to the Prism Glass, a bar popular with the locals in the area, especially for the younger crowd; indeed, the place was packed, even with the weather reports of thunderstorms moving into the area. It was not her first time visiting the establishment, though the last time she stepped foot into the place was nearly a year ago; she made sure to not stake out the same location too frequently, or else inquisitive eyes would surely notice.

Meanwhile, her own inquisitive eyes were already scoping out the place, looking for potential targets among the sea of patrons for her to woo and lure back to her place. There were many handsome men, most of whom had already been claimed by equally-beautiful women. There were a few not-so-attractive men who sat alone; one tried to motion Valerie to sit down and have a drink with her, but she declined as politely as she could.

As she pushed through several more people, eventually she came to an area with a number of tables, many of which had people seated at them, either as a group or seemingly for new meetings. However, one table in particular bore a man sitting alone, downing a drink while fidgeting with his smartphone. In many ways, this black-haired man was her type: Black, perhaps in his late 20s--maybe a few years older than she was--and handsome, and he also had a small mustache and a stubble of a beard upon his face.

It seemed that she had found her catch.

Valerie approached his table; it seemed as if he was incognizant to her presence, perhaps due to being used to so many people walking to-and-fro.

"Hey there," Valerie greeted. "How is a handsome guy like you sitting back here all alone?"

The man's attention shifted from his phone to Valerie's face, his own face wearing a slight surprise upon it. "People sense that I'm hiding a dark, terrible secret, and stay away," he joked with a smirk.

"Oh really? Then what does that say about me?"

"That you're attracted to danger?"

Valerie chuckled. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm also dangerous, and thus, a kindred spirit."

"Nice. Though I should let you-"

"My name's Valerie," she interrupted. "What's yours?"

"Lamar," he answered.

"That's a pretty nice name," Valerie said.

"You think so? I always thought it was just plain."

"No, I like it. I think it suits you." She pulled the chair in front of her out and sat down in it.

"Uh...Thanks, I guess. But before yo-"

"You come here often?" Valerie asked as she cut him off again.

Lamar sighed. "Often enough, though I don't really make it a habit."

"Yeah, this is my first time here in a long time. I live in Green Cape, so it's a ways away. But I like the atmosphere, even though the drinks are more pricy than what I'm used to."

"That's why I don't make it a habit," he bluntly said. "I can't afford to come here every week, at least not right now. Anyway-"

"You should drive around and find some new joints," Valerie interrupted again. "I try to visit a new club every week or two, so I can give you the lowdown on what's good."

"I'm fine," Lamar said. "I think I can manage that on my own; if I need some pointers, I have by buddies to go to."

"Well, alright then." Valerie noticed that Lamar was being a bit stand-offish. She wondered if he just did not want to be bothered; though if that were the case, why would he be in such a public place to begin with? "What are you drinking?"

"Coors," he replied.

"Neat! I'd like to get a glass myself."

"The bar's over there," he pointed his thumb behind him, towards the bar whereupon several patrons were already seated.

"Yeah, but I'd rather stay here with the handsome guy I met tonight. I'm interested in getting to know you a little better.."

"Well, I'm flattered, but that's really not a good idea," Lamar answered.

"Why not?" Valerie asked, rather curious as to why he was trying to drive her away.

"Because I-"

"So you've made a new friend, Lamar," spoke a female voice from Valerie's right. "And all it took was a trip to the ladies' room..."

Both she and Lamar turned towards the source of the voice: a dark-haired Asian woman, perhaps around the same age as Lamar, or maybe even a bit older. This woman's face looked a bit more mature than Valerie, and she seemed to have an air of professional sternness about her, especially with the black blazer and matching skirt she wore upon her lean frame.

"I really tried to tell her, sweetie," Lamar told the woman. "But she kept cutting me off."

Valerie turned to Lamar; despite this potentially being quite a disaster in the making for him, his demeanor was still pretty calm.

"So I guess you weren't alone after all..." Valerie muttered to him, her cheeks a bit red with embarrassment.

Lamar shook his head. "I was trying to let you know, so you wouldn't waste your time, but I guess you were really smitten with me."

"I'm sorry," Valerie apologized as she stood up from her seat, turning her attention to Lamar's girlfriend or wife or whatever their relation was; at this point, Valerie noticed that this woman was also taller than her, by at least three or four inches. She was not wearing heels, either.

"It's cool. I'm sure lots of guys here would be happy to get to know you," Lamar said.

"I hope so," Valerie said. "You have a good night, Lamar." And then, turning to his mate, "You too, Miss."

The woman simply nodded--her glare unyielding all the while--before taking the very seat that Valerie had been sitting in until then. Paying the couple no more mind, Valerie decided to move on.

That truly was humiliating, she thought. Though the signs were there, particularly with Lamar's own disinterest in her and his trying to shoo her away towards the end; perhaps she should have let him talk instead of cutting him off so many times. She could not fault him at all; this was all on her.

She was more often than not successful with the men she went to court, though there were times where her target would not be interested. Some of them informed her right away that they were involved with someone else and would not budge; some outright stated that they preferred the company of men; some just were not attracted to her for one reason or another. Being rejected just came with the territory, though it still stung when it occurred.

...Still, she wished that she was able to shrink Lamar and take him away with her. But there was no way she would expose herself like that; there were far too many people around, and showing off her powers may even cause some of them to put two-and-two together regarding the disappearances of young men in the five-county area over the past year.

Maybe he and his mate would break up in the future, providing her an opportunity to swoop in and claim her prey? ...An appealing thought, but not one to hold out for.

"...Oh well, on to the next guy!" Valerie declared to herself, before resuming her hunt.

~~~

Thunder rumbled in the distance while lightning constantly flashed in the massive dark cloud above, occasionally and briefly lighting up the night with its spectacular display. Though the rain had not yet arrived, Lamar knew that it'd only be a matter of time before it too would make its arrival; after all, the weather reports had warned of it all week.

With his car's now-almost full tank of gas, his main concern was getting himself and Joy home before the downpour started.

Sliding back into the driver's seat, Lamar passed a bag of pretzels to his girlfriend, who was lying back in the passenger seat while watching a video on her iPhone, her blazer having since been removed from her light blue blouse and tossed lazily onto the back seat.

"Alright, let's get out of here," Lamar said as he buckled in his seatbelt and started up the car; immediately after, the air conditioning system started up, as well as the radio's rock station. "I don't like how much lightning there is out here."

"What, afraid of a little bit of lightning?" Joy teased as she tore open the plastic bag.

"Lightning can strike from anywhere," Lamar responded as he pulled out of the gas station lot and drove onto the road. "I mean, I once read a story where some girl was sitting on a hill on a nice, sunny day, and she got hit with a bolt of lightning from a storm a few miles away."

"Really?" Joy did not sound convinced.

"Uh-huh."

"You're just being paranoid." Joy stuffed a handful of the bow-shaped pretzels into her mouth and started chomping down on them.

"You're one to talk about paranoia," Lamar responded. "When you thought that girl at the bar was going to steal me from you."

"Mmm!" Joy made a muffled, partially-agitated sound as she swallowed the mass in her mouth. "What did you expect me to think when I see this younger lady suddenly sitting with my boyfriend?"

"Do you have that little faith in me?"

"Well, of course I trust you, but... I dunno, something about her rubbed me the wrong way."

"Tell me about it. You wouldn't shut up about her for the next fifteen minutes!" Lamar snickered as he merged onto the freeway, picking up speed as he did so. As expected for it being so late at night--well past midnight, even--the freeway was almost completely vacant of other vehicles, except for a white car behind him that exited from the same ramp as he had.

"Did I really rant about her for that long?" Joy seemed genuinely surprised.

"To be honest, I kind of toned much of it out, but the cliff notes version was that we would have been banned from the bar if she hadn't've moved."

"Yeah, I did insinuate that, didn't I?" A rather impressive, multi-forked bolt of lightning flashed in the sky. "Wow, you saw that?"

"Yep. We should be home soon, and then it can rain all it wants."

"You're such a baby," Joy teased, right before chomping a piece of the pretzel she held in her hand.

"Is that right? Well, when we get home, I'll show you just how much of a baby I am."

"I'm sure you will," Joy responded. "And I'm sure you'll spend the first hour on my feet."

"Aw, you caught me," Lamar jested, maneuvering his car around another vehicle driving slower than he was; the white car behind him did the same. "But I just can't stay away from them. They're so beautiful-"

"I know," Joy cut in. "You tell me that all the time."

"I wish I could shrink myself and live between your toes forever."

"Yikes..." Joy was taken aback by his little fantasy. "What am I going to do with a tiny stowaway between my toes?"

"...I'd become big again to help with the important stuff. And to sex you up."

"I think I'd prefer a man who's big 100% of the time."

"What about 90%-"

"One hundred percent."

"Ninety-ni-"

"ONE. HUNDRED. PERCENT." Joy stressed.

Lamar sighed. "Well, it's not like it's possible to shrink anyway. I guess I'll just live it in fantasy."

"Some things are better off left there," Joy remarked as she ate some more of her snack.

Lamar kept driving down the freeway, curving as its road did. The cool interior was filled with the sound of the rock music on rotation on the radio as well as the sound of Joy munching on her pretzels. Occasionally, a bright flash of lightning lit up the sky, even overpowering the streetlights attached to the freeway divider. However, due to the music and the car windows being closed, the thunder was inaudible to them.

Occasionally, he would have to pass up another vehicle that was driving slower than he was. The white car behind him matched his every movement, which he found a bit strange but did not pay too much mind to.

The band Queen's famous song "We Are The Champions" started to play on the radio.

"Ugh, not this song again," Joy complained. "They play it way too much."

"Hey, this was my graduation song," Lamar commented.

"It was everyone's graduation song."

"It's a real fitting song, though."

"Not really. No one's the champion of the world right out of college. In fact, you're the world's bitch."

"...I can't even argue with that," Lamar said, just as his car came upon his exit. Putting on his right blinker, he exited the freeway and drove up the ramp and onto the service drive.

The white car behind him did the same.

"Oh-kay..." Lamar muttered as his eyes glanced at the rear view mirror.

"What?" Joy asked.

Lamar decided not to say anything about it; it could all be in his head. "Nothing."

Lamar made a right on the next turn, as did the car behind him. As nature's light show kept flashing in the sky, he drove six blocks down the road that he was presently on, before merging onto the left-hand lane and making a left turn onto the wide and divided boulevard that he had come upon. Once again, the white car copied his every move.

At this point, Lamar was becoming rather concerned. Was it truly possible that he was being followed? And if so, by whom?

The current road--Ulysses Road--had four lanes going both ways, with a stretch of grass separating both sides of the road. As of right now, there were few other cars on the road that he could see, so Lamar decided to try an experiment.

He put his left blinker on and--from his rightmost lane--slowly shifted all the way to the leftmost lane, and then after several seconds, triggered his right blinker and merged back to the rightmost lane.

The white car did the exact same thing.

That confirmed it in his mind: They were indeed being followed.

"What did you do that for?" Joy asked of his maneuver.

"I had to see something..." Lamar said, a hint of apprehension in his voice. "I think we're being followed."

"What!?" Joy became concerned, before turning around to look out the rear-view mirror of their pursuer.

"Yeah, they've been on our tail since the freeway," Lamar said; he was trying to remain calm, but one could easily tell that he was concerned, worried even. Especially someone as close to him as Joy was.

"Who is it?" Joy asked, worriedly watching the car tailing them.

"I don't know," Lamar answered, turning off the radio with one hand. "I didn't mess with anyone at the gas station or cut anyone off, either."

At the next intersection was the next turn that Lamar had to make on his way home, which led to the much narrower Bobrick Street. With his right blinker on, he slowed to the intersection--its traffic signal green for Ulysses Road--and then made his right turn onto Bobrick. The white car trailing them did the same, turning onto the street with them.

"They're still following us..." Joy noted.

"Dammit..." Lamar muttered.

Lamar kept driving, the air filled with the tense silence beyond the hum of the car's engine and the air conditioning. He came to a stop at a red traffic signal, and as he waited there, he tried to look through the pursuing car's windshield via his rear-view mirror to see any hint of the driver's identity. However, he could not make out their physical features due to the darkness, and before long, the traffic signal turned green, with both cars driving through the intersection.

Three streets later, another traffic light approached. This one had just turned yellow and was preparing to switch to red; normally, he would slow down, as even speeding he would not have made it before it turned red.

This time, he went for a risky move. He picked up speed, and shot through the intersection a second after it turned red, right before the other cars waiting at the intersecting street moved. Perhaps his assailant would not show the same reckless bravery?

Lamar kept his eyes on the rear-view mirror, and saw the white car also speed through the intersection, causing the other cars to immediately break before impact while blowing their horns at the pursuer.

"Ohh shit...!" Lamar uttered.

"Who the hell is this guy!?" Joy said, clearly worried. "Why is he so hellbent on following us?"

"I don't know, but I really don't want to lead them to the house," Lamar said.

"So, what are you going to do?" Joy asked.

Lamar exhaled heavily. His house was on a street that was only eight blocks away, and as he said, revealing to his stalker where he lived would have been bad news, especially down the line if they were successful in thwarting them that night. So, he figured that it was time for a bit of a detour.

He shifted over to the left lane and, at the next street, made a left turn onto the wider Vicker Drive, an industrial road full of processing and construction plants. Due to being the weekend and well into the night, all of the buildings were closed, their gates locked securely. With the lightning still flashing constantly, they gave a rather eerie vibe, not helped by the apprehension both he and Joy were feeling at the moment.

One of the plants' gates stood in front of a security booth, with its light still on. Perfect, Lamar thought; he could get to the guard inside and ask for assistance in dealing with this matter.

He slowed down to a crawl as he pulled off to the right curb, eventually stopping right in front of the gate. The white car did the same, slowing down and pulling off to the side right behind him and parked there, its bright headlights shining right into the interior of Lamar's car.

"Why are we stopping here?" Joy asked.

"I'm going to get that security guard to help us," Lamar said. "Whoever this person is, I doubt they'll try something stupid with the guard here."

Joy turned and looked towards the booth, leaning closer to the car window as she did so. Then, she turned back towards Lamar. "...No one's in there."

"Seriously?!" Lamar said, and upon taking a closer look, it seemed that his girlfriend was correct; the booth was empty. "Shit."

Both Lamar and Joy sat silently in their respective seats, no doubt pondering their next move. Outside, the sound of thunder echoes throughout the atmosphere outside, a sign that the storm that Lamar had been trying to beat had nearly caught up to them; if it were not for their stalker, they would had been in the safety of their home by then.

Then, they heard the sound of the door of their stalker's car shutting. Lamar immediately looked into his car window to get a look at who it was that had been chasing them: approaching his side of the car was a young, dark-haired Asian woman wearing a lavender knee-length dress under a brown jacket. This woman appeared to be very familiar to Lamar.

...In fact, Lamar almost immediately figured out who it was.

"Are you kidding me!?" Lamar exclaimed in exasperation once his mind worked out the identity of their stalker.

"W-what?!" Joy inquired.

"It's that girl from the bar!" He answered.

"WHAT!?" She too was stunned to learn of the white car's owner. "That girl who was sitting with you when-"

Joy was interrupted when their stalker--Valerie, he believed she said her name was--knocked on the driver's side car window, accompanied by a loud crash of thunder. Both Lamar and Joy glared at her as she peered inside of the car, wondering just what this mad woman was planning.

"Get the fuck away from us!!" Joy furiously shouted at her.

Valerie did not respond; even with the windows up, Joy had assuredly yelled loud enough for the stalker to hear it.

"I need to get to the bottom of this..." Lamar said, before pressing the button on the car door to bring the driver's side window down.

"Hey there," Valerie almost-innocently greeted as the window came down.

"Why are you following us?" Lamar said, his patience already run thin.

"I'm following you?" Valerie seemed to feign ignorance. "No, that's not true. I was only trying to get home before it started raining."

"That's a hell of a coincidence that you copied every single move I did on the road," Lamar responded, before a realization suddenly came to mind. "Wait, you said at the bar that you live in Green Cape. That's literally in the opposite direction from here!"

"Oh, oops," Valerie nonchalantly said, realizing her slip-up. "I did say that, didn't I?"

"So you ARE following us!" Lamar yelled.

"Hmm... Maybe." Valerie was being annoyingly coy about her actions.

"You lying bitch!!" Joy barked. "If you don't get away from us, I'm going to come out there and bash your head into the road!!" Joy was normally rather calm and reserved, but she did have her moments when her emotions got the best of her, and her frustrations over Valerie from earlier that night seemed to be spilling over.

"Wow, that's pretty violent," Valerie said in response. "How can you be with such a violent woman, Lamar?"

"Because she's willing to defend me from crazy people like you," Lamar said. "And don't say my name like we're friends and shit."

"But we will be friends, Lamar," Valerie said, in a somewhat menacing manner. "You're going to come with me, whether you want to or not."

"The hell I am!" Lamar angrily retorted.

"Don't be like that," Valerie said, before taking a few steps back from the car. Then, she took a look around at her surroundings, which made her ever more suspicious.

"What are you waiting for?!" Joy said to Lamar. "Let's get out of here!"

"R-right." Lamar prepared to shift his car back into drive.

However, there was a flash of light, one that briefly blinded both of them. Had lightning struck nearby? No, it could not have been, as such a close strike would have been accompanied with an extremely-loud crash of thunder. So, what was it?

Then, both he and Joy noticed it: the world outside of the car around them was growing. Joy started to scream as their environment continuously enlarged.

"What's happening!?" Joy shouted. "What's going on?!"

"I don't know!!" Lamar responded. "Everything's getting bigger!!"

This was a very worrisome situation, and neither of them had any ideas what was happening, or how it was happening. Unless... No, it couldn't be, Lamar thought.

His heart still racing, Lamar looked out of the driver's side window, towards their mad stalker who--like the rest of the world--grew ever taller over them. Valerie was watching his car--or perhaps Lamar himself--with the biggest satisfied smile upon her admittedly-cute face.

"She did it...!" Lamar concluded.

"You can't be serious!!" Joy responded, understandably skeptical of his claim.

"Yeah, she's smiling at us!" Lamar continued. "She's behind this- She's shrinking us!!"

Soon, the world's growth came to an end, a sign that whatever process Valerie used to reduce them had ceased its machinations. Now, the random blades of grass rose higher than they did, while the security booth as well as the fence rose into the heavens, it seemed. Valerie herself was like a skyscraper, an imposing one that instilled a sense of dread into the cores of Lamar and Joy.

Especially once her massive wedge sandals began to carry her closer to their car.

"Go, go!!" Joy frantically urged.

Lamar quickly shifted the car into drive and stomped onto the acceleration, causing his car to shoot off at a breakneck speed.

...However, they had not moved even a few inches before they found themselves being carried off of the ground. Both of them screamed in fear as, beyond the windshield, they were soon met with Valerie's billboard-like face as she held the car in her grasp.

Joy kept screaming as she now clutched tightly onto Lamar's body, which also trembled in fear as stared wide-eyed at the young woman who had captured them.

"Gotcha!" Valerie said with a sickeningly-triumphant smile. "Now, let's go home."

Then, her face disappeared as they were moved lower, into a leather containment of some sort, perhaps a purse or handbag, judging by various accessories around them visible via the headlights. Then, with a sound of a zipper, they were left trapped inside of this prison as it began to rock about.

"Oh my god... Oh my god... Oh my god..." Joy chanted repeatedly.

"This can't be happening..." Lamar lamented. "This can't be..."

"...Oh my god... Oh my... god... Ohh...." Joy then broke down and started weeping.

~~~

"I can't believe I pulled that off," Valerie proudly said to herself as she walked back to her car, having contained Lamar securely inside of her handbag.

She truly went above and beyond that night. She had failed to court anyone at Prism Glass after first meeting--and being chased away by--Lamar, and then left to try another club, where she was unbelievably unsuccessful as well. At that point, she figured that that night would not shine brightly upon her; perhaps all of her good karma for the day had been used up on her presentation at work.

However, by mere coincidence, while sitting in her car at a gas station she had refueled at, she caught sight of Lamar walking by and then pumping gas into his own car. After watching him for a minute or so, she decided to trail him and see what happened. She made a lot of risky maneuvers, including speeding through a red traffic light and potentially causing an accident that could have claimed her own life; she was glad that no cops were around to witness it, as she would have lost Lamar but gained a ticket or even a court date. That said, the whole episode had given her a rush, as if she was a predator out in the wild chasing its meal.

In the end, her reckless endeavor paid off, and she was able to capture her prey at last. All-in-all, it had been a tremendous day for her. However, it was a shame that she had also acquired some unwanted collateral along with Lamar; she would have to deal with it once she got home.

Opening her car door, Valerie slid inside and placed her handbag onto the passenger seat. Then, she started up her car, pulled off of the curb, and drove away from this creepy industrial area, just as the rain had finally caught up to her.

~~~

The sounds of the same rock station that they had been listening to before penetrated the handbag's leather walls. However, the actual interior of their car was silent, except for the sounds of Joy weeping as she kept hold of Lamar who in turn had his arms wrapped around her body; the upbeat music playing served as a harrowing contrast to their horrific predicament. He had since turned off the car, as he felt that keeping it on was pointless. Thus, he and Joy sat in the darkness, riding out whatever trip their manic captor was taking them on.

It seemed as if hours had passed, though a look on his smartphone showed that it had only been a bit less than half an hour since they had been thrown into their leathery prison. At least the phone was good for something at the moment, no matter how minor; both had tried to call for help, but neither of their phones were able to pick up a signal, likely due to their size.

"It'll be alright..." Lamar did his best to try to comfort joy, even as his own nerves were wrecked.

Joy did not say anything in response; perhaps she knew--and so did he--that there was a high probability that their lives would be ending that night. There was no telling just what was going through Valerie's mind, but going by her actions, there was no way her thoughts had any benefit to them.

After an arduous wait, the music along with the outside engine suddenly came to a stop, and they both felt worldly motion once more. Following the beeping sound from the much larger car signaling it being locked via remote control, they heard constant footsteps, broken by the a door opening and closing. Perhaps they had finally reached their ultimate destination: Valerie's home.

The zipping sound from above brought with it bright light that shined into the bag, though Lamar and Joy had no time to marvel before they were once again taken up and held in Valerie's giant hand at waist level. It appeared that she was sitting on a chair, inside of a massive but mostly-unimpressive kitchen. The curtains over the two windows were drawn, but he could hear the rain beating against the glass.

"Now, let's get you out of there," Valerie's voice boomed.

They watched as Valerie's hand came down upon the car and then took a firm grip of its roof. Then, it began to pull, and along with it was the sound of tearing steel and breaking glass. Joy screamed as the young woman effortlessly tore off the roof of the car--windshield and back window included--fully exposing them to Valerie's horrifying gaze.

"There," Valerie said as she tossed the roof elsewhere. "Now, to get you out of there."

Next, she reached in with her thumb and index finger, aiming at Lamar in particular. He yelled at her and threatened her to stay away, but she was not deterred. It grabbed hold of his body and pulled him--along with Joy still clutching onto him as tightly as she could--out of the car. Lamar wished that he and Joy had kept their seatbelts on, though logically it would not have done any good in this situation.

"Ugh, you had to come with him," Valerie said with a grimace as she addressed Joy. "You're just deadweight."

With her other hand, she pulled Joy away from Lamar. She frantically called out to him as he tried to reach out and grab her, but Valerie was too quick.

"You sit here, Lamar," Valerie told him as she placed him onto the table beside her bag, and then stood up to her feet. "I have to take out the trash."

"What are you going to do to her!?" Lamar shouted.

Valerie simply flashed him a smile, before turning her attention back to Joy, who kept screaming and calling Lamar's name. At that moment, a severe sense of dread filled his core.

"You said you were going to beat me into the road earlier," Valerie said to Joy. "Well, there's a change in plans. I'm the one who's going to be doing the beating."

"No, stop!!" Lamar yelled. "You better not hurt her!!"

Valerie said nothing. Instead, she simply released her grip of Joy, letting her fall the several stories-worth plunge to the polished wooden floor below, with Joy screaming all the while. Lamar winced as she finally struck the hard floor, expecting his girlfriend to not have survived the fall.

However, he was somewhat relieved to see that she was still alive, though it seemed that the fall did hurt her somewhat, as she laid on the floor, struggling to move.

"JOY!!!" Lamar called out to her.

"No, let me correct myself," Valerie said to his injured girlfriend. "I won't beat you, 'cuz that's too much work. I'm just gonna squish you like a bug under my shoe."

Even though he knew deep down that it would come to this, Lamar's heart sank as soon as Valerie said those words. "NO, WAIT!!!" He called as Valerie's right foot moved over Joy's sprawled-out body. She too started to scream as she was cloaked by its shadow.

"NO, PLEASE!!!" Joy pleaded as Valerie's foot lowered upon her. "STOP IT!!!"

"STOP, YOU CRAZY BITCH!!!" Lamar shouted. "DON'T KILL HER!!! STOP!!!"

Despite the constant shouting and pleading, Valerie was unphased, and soon Joy was completely invisible from the sight of Valerie's sandal. Lamar closed his watering eyes and turned away, but his ears did not lie: they carried to him the crunchy melody of Joy's body being violently compressed.

"Oh god..." Lamar lamented as he choked back tears, still keeping his sight averted as his ears kept relaying all the information he needed to hear, of the wet, sticky squelching companied with the sound of bones cracking and breaking.

Agonizing seconds passed, before the song of death came to an end, and Lamar slowly opened his eyes and turned to look at what had become of his beloved girlfriend, even if he had already known the full story. Indeed, he was met with the gruesome sight of Valerie's sandaled foot resting atop a pool of blood, which she slowly lifted, revealing the smashed and demolished body of what had been Joy, with red tendrils stretching from the floor to the bottom of her shoe before snapping apart.

"Nooo..." Lamar fell to his knees and fully gave himself to his sorrow. Joy--the love of his life, the woman whom he was planning to propose marriage to--had left the world, and in a manner more befitting of a lowly bug. Snuffed out by this maniacal young woman who wanted to claim him for herself.

For her part, Valerie simply turned her head to Lamar, and smiled. "Now we can be all alone."

"Just kill me now..." Lamar muttered, not bothering to wipe the deluge from his eyes. "I don't want to be with you. I want my Joy back..." If death could reunite him with Joy, he would gladly take it over being some obsessed murderer's plaything.

"Don't be like that, Lamar," Valerie said as she approached him, and then picked him up from the table, holding him in the palm of her hand as she brought him closer to her gigantic face. "I'll be a lot more than you can handle. You'll soon find that I'll be a better mistress than that stuffy bitch could ever be."

"You... evil..." Lamar uttered.

"Now, shall we get started, my sweet?" Valerie said with a grin, before carrying him out of the kitchen, leaving Joy's flattened corpse behind to rot on the floor all alone.



------>

Vignette #6 - Turned Table

It was a nice day outside.

That was what went through Valerie's mind as she took a stroll through her neighborhood. The sun peeked through one of the breaks in the many clouds above, but the weather forecast made no mention of rain. However, despite the mid-summer calendar, it was comparably cool, with the temperature lingering in the mid-60s, low enough that she wore a light jacket. ...Which served as a contrast with her shorts and flip-flops, but it was still warm enough that both were viable clothing options.

It has just passed noon, and a number of her neighbors were also out and about, either toiling in their yards or--like her--leisurely enjoying the weekend weather. A number of them waved at her as she passed, which she returned with a friendly smile. Though with the mix of rock, pop, and rap music playing in her earphones via her phone, she could hear nary a sound of her surroundings. Not that it really mattered, as she tended to mostly keep to herself.

Her neighborhood contained a number of young and handsome men, albeit mostly White. Still, she would have loved to have snatch up some of them either running domestic errands or exercising and have her own fun with them. However, that would have proved to be way too risky, as much as she regretted it; it was no wonder that she kept her prowl further away from home, in nightclubs or bars, where the flood of people would mask her actions.

She actually did visit one such club the night before and brought back one of the patrons, a brown-haired fellow who in actuality wooed her. Unfortunately, he... "expired" hours ago; Valerie figured that she was a bit too rough with him. Additionally, she had no cache of men at the moment, so she knew that she would have to go back on the hunt soon.

She really wished she could just go up and shrink the blond fellow doing jumping jacks in the front yard of the house she was presently walking past, but she quickly put such a maneuver out of her mind. Still, her mind went there, imagining the hunk of a man being compressed into a red paste by her might.

...That said, he was more of Candace's type of guy, anyway.

The scene in Valerie's mind then shifted to Candace, with that blond young man desperately running for his life to avoid being flattened by her ebony feet. For Candace, crushing those bugs was especially easy, considering that she wore size-10 shoes. She could easily slaughter a dozen of those tiny men with a single step--and once proudly demonstrated that fact to Valerie and Kyra. Valerie found herself quite envious of that fact. ...Not that she would have wanted to have such large feet, especially with her short, petite stature.

Before long, she found herself walking through the darkness of the semi-long tunnel under a nearby overpass. The bridge itself was a relic, constructed decades ago but still seeing a bit of use. At that point, she realized that she had walked rather far from her home, as this overpass was a good twelve blocks away. She had not even had noticed the houses of her neighborhood giving way to the somewhat-wooded area that preceded this tunnel.

The tunnel was quiet, almost eerily so. What little sound there was--mostly from the outside world--echoed throughout the chamber. On the sidewalk on both sides of the street were pillars made of brick and stone, slightly wider than the average man and spaced about eight feet from each other. These pillars were also worn from age, but they still did their job in providing additional support for the overpass above.

Valerie was about halfway through the tunnel, paying more attention to her phone than the path ahead, before she noticed quick motion before her. She looked ahead--at the next pillar--to find an older, scraggy man holding a knife in his shaking hands. He had a rather flustered, deranged look upon his face.

Valerie's heart started to race as she put a pause to her music.

"You heard me!" The man barked. "Gimme yer cash, and no one's gonna get hurt here!"

Valerie instinctively took a step back in shock, but so too did the man take a step forward.

"I ain't gonna say it again!" He said. "Gimme your goddamn money!!"

It was clear that this man--perhaps nothing more than a bum on the street--intended to rob her, or stab AND rob her. ...Or even do much worse than that, and THEN stab and rob her.

...Of course, she had a weapon of her own. And it was one that this maniac would never expect.

She took a quick look around her surroundings; aside from the two of them, the coast was clear.

"What, you gonna try an' run, girl!?" The man taunted. "You ain't gonna get away from me!"

"No, I'm not going to run," Valerie told the man, before pointing her index finger at him.

"I'll chop that- GAHH!!!" He was hit with a bluish-white bolt of lightning-like magic that coated his body with a similar glow that lit up their section of the tunnel. However, this illumination would quickly fade as the would-be mugger rapidly diminished in size, Valerie keeping her stern gaze upon the man all the while.

In seconds, she brought the process to its conclusion, leaving the man at only a mere two inches tall. In the darkness, his minuscule form could barely be seen, but from the frightful screaming that she heard from the tiny man, it was clear that he realized just what had happened to him.

Without a word, Valerie approached the man and almost immediately made an attempt to stomp him flat into the sidewalk. He must have seen this coming, as he bolted as soon as she started to walk and managed to dodge her sandal-clad foot.

"What!? Wait!!" The man screamed at her. "Wait a minut- AGHHH!!" He managed to avoid her second try at murdering him.

The man scrambled about as Valerie coldly went to squash him multiple times, as he pleaded with her for mercy all the while. Despite her actual intent in killing him, he managed to ward off his fate each time with surprisingly fast movements; perhaps it was no wonder that he was so confident that he would have caught her if she had tried to run before.

At that point, she had another thought. As much as she wanted to crush him like a pathetic bug under her foot, she felt that such a fate was too abrupt for him. No... He needed to suffer.

After her final stomp, she kneeled down and reached for the fleeing man. Seeing this, he screamed and tried to get away from her and flee into the darkness, but she was not having any of that. Her finger wrapped around his tiny frame and picked him up from the pavement, the man still hollering at the top of his lungs.

"Lemme go, please!!" He pleaded. "I promise I won't hurt ya!!"

"No," Valerie responded. "You're coming home with me. I have some fun plans for us." She grinned darkly.

"What- what plans!?" The man sounded terrified of what she had in store for him.

"You'll see. Now, I need you to be quiet until we get there. Or else, I'll kill you on the spot."

The man gulped audibly, and after she stood back up, Valerie hastily stuffed him into one of the until-then unzipped pockets on her jacket. Once he was inside, she zipped it up, securing containing the dirty bum inside of his clothy prison.

She let out a sigh. "What an idiot..." Still, she was hoping to find a new plaything, and one had been dropped right into her lap. She only wished that he was younger. ...And handsome. ...And even Black. But as the saying went: "Beggars can't be choosers."

She had walked far enough from her home anyway. She decided to turn around and walk the twelve blocks back to her humble abode, switching back on her smartphone's music playlist in the process.

Just as she did so, two cars drove into the tunnel from behind her, and just as quickly passed her by. She could only imagine how the scene would have played out if they were only less than two minutes earlier...

~~~

"There!" Valerie said proudly to herself, her eyes upon the platter of tools that she had compiled.

Said tools consisted of a scalpel, five pin needles, a box of matches, and a single candle. It had been a rather long while since she had broke these items out, but she figured that now was as good as time as any to get back in the groove of things, to forgo the use of her direct body parts--as fun as that was--to instead make use of these tools. Needless to say, she was quite looking forward to it; she even poured herself a glass of cherry juice to savor during the act.

Carrying the platter in one hand and her beverage in the other, she walked over to the kitchen table, where the former mugger was waiting for her. Lying on two layers of cardboard, he had been stripped of all of his clothing, except for his briefs, and his spread limbs were each bound via scotch tape to the cardboard, collectively making him appear like the letter "X". For what she was planning to do, she had increased his size somewhat, to four inches tall.

As expected, terror had completely overtaken the man's being, his dull eyes wide with fear as he kept pleading with Valerie to release him while fighting in a vain effort to free himself from his bonds.

She set the platter and her glass onto the table besides the slabs of cardboard. Then, she pulled out the chair before her, and sat herself into its plush seat.

"Well, are you ready?" she asked the mugger.

"What're you 'bout to do to me!?" he yelled.

Valerie smiled, right as she reached over and took hold of the scalpel. "Just reliving the dissections we had to do in biology class a long time ago."

"What!! NO!!" He screamed.

"You know," Valerie spoke to him, "you're pretty stupid. If you had waited until I was walking past the pillar you were hiding behind, your little plan would have worked. ...But I'm glad you ARE pretty stupid. I don't intend on dying anytime soon."

She started to bring the scalpel down onto the mugger, who started to struggle even more frantically as the sharp blade drew near as he shouted "No!" over and over again.

"...And I expect the same from you," she continued. "Don't do dying on me until I say so!"

With that, the sharp edge of the scalpel pierced the left inner thigh of the mugger, triggering a loud yelp of pain from the man. She was careful not to go completely through his flesh, though the gash was deep enough to draw blood, and lots of it. Then, she slowly moved the blade downward, widening the man's cut in the process as more blood poured onto the cardboard.

"A very nice first cut," Valerie stated as she pulled the blade back, using her free hand to take a sip of her juice. She looked at the man's face, his mouth going at it as he switched between crying out in pain and shouting obscenities at her. "Maybe I should cut out your vocal chords next?" she threatened, which had no effect on him. "...Whatever. Your screams are half the fun."

With the scalpel, she made another incision in his skin, this time on his gut, slowly and arduously slicing the cut aside his navel. The man screamed still, and his struggling to free himself only intensified. She went for a third cut, slicing another opening into his chest as blood poured out. She was careful to not get his vital organs, at least for the moment.

"STOPPIT!!" He yelled. "STOP, YA CRAZY BITCH!!!"

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Valerie casually responded.

With the blade of the scalpel dripping with the mugger's blood, she returned it to the tray and went for her next weapon: the matches. Breaking off one of the sticks, she struck its tip against its box to light it on fire. Then, she moved the flame closer to the man, his eyes widened as his head rapidly shook in terror.

"NO! NO! STOP!!!" He blurted.

"What should I burn?" Valerie wondered aloud. "Maybe your arm?" She suggested as she drew the flame close to his left arm. "Or your hair?" the flame moved close to his head, as he did his best to recoil from the blaze. "Oh! I know!" The flame moved over to his covered private area. "I'll burn your dick off! But I bet there's not much to burn. A bottom-feeder like you probably has a small dick. I bet the girls you did manage to get were very disappointed."

The mugger managed to force his right hand to flip the bird at her. "SHUT UP!!!"

Valerie chuckled. "Guess I struck a nerve."

Though perhaps mercifully, she brought the match to her face and blew it out with a quick puff of air. She dropped the spent match onto the tray, whereupon--after drinking more of her cherry juice-- she replaced it with one of the pin needles.

"W-what're you gonna do with that!?" The mugger yelled.

"The tape is doing a nice job in keeping you down," Valerie said. "But I think it could use a little bit more assistance."

"WAIT, STOP- AHHHHHHH!!!" He screamed in agony as Valerie drove the needle through the palm of his right hand, its point easily passing through his flesh and piercing the cardboard below it. "BITCH!! BITCH!!"

Valerie simply smiled as the screaming instinctively tried to move that arm, but found himself unable to do so; it had been perfectly pinned in place. She took ahold of the scalpel again, this time running the blade across the same arm whose hand that had just been piked. From his hand all the way to his armpit, she made a nice, long gash in his skin that poured even more blood onto the cardboard.

"Think about it," Valerie spoke as she cut another incision into his chest. "This is what you were planning to do to me if I didn't hand you my cash, or if I didn't have my shrink power." Her other hand brought her glass to her lips again, sipping more of her sweet juice into her mouth. "Your blood's as red as my juice."

"I'M SORRY!!!" He pleaded at the same time as her remark about her juice. "I'M SORRY I DID THAT!!"

"And now you're 'sorry'. A bit late for that, don'tcha think?" She pressed the tip of the blade right onto his ribcage, with only enough force to make a minor, mostly-bloodless breach. However, she spun the scalpel between her finger and thumb, triggering another painful yelp from the man.

"STOP!! AGHHH, PLEASE STOP!!" His body fought frantically, which only made his torture even more painful.

Valerie chuckled, just as she withdrew the scalpel again and broke off another match. Striking it alight, she then took the candle and used the match to light it on fire. Extinguishing the match, she moved the flame end of the blue stick of wax over to the man, who had not stopped yelping for clemency.

"I'm glad I didn't throw this old candle out," Valerie said as she held the flame over the man's chest. "But it takes a while to melt, but that's a good thing, I guess. I mean, don't you hate it when you're at a birthday party, and the candles get wax all over the delicious cake?"

She half-expected a response to her inquiry from the mugger, but he did nothing but whimper and glare at her. She in turn grinned as she held the flame over him for nearly a minute, though to him it must have felt much longer.

"Granted, this isn't a birthday candle, so the wax from this thing gets pretty hot... Oh! I think I see some drippage!" Valerie announced as she indeed spotted melted wax pooling at the edge of the flame.

"PLEASE DON'T DO THIS!!" The man yelled. "DON'T!!!"

Valerie chuckled again. "As if!" The sphere of liquid wax steadily grew larger and larger, until the weight became too great and it detached from the candle, dripping downward, right onto the gash on the man's lower abdomen.

The scream he let out was truly blood-curdling.

In fact, she wondered if anyone outside could have heard it; likely not, she determined.

"My!" Valerie feigned being impressed, though part of it was genuine. "That was a loud scream! I wonder if you can do it again?"

"NO, PLEASE!!" The mugger pleaded.

"'No, please!'" she mocked. "If you really want me to stop, you would get yourself out of here, but that's impossible, isn't it? ...Too bad!"

"GAAAH- WHY'RE YOU DOIN' THIS!?"

"Well, it's because you tried to jump me, really." Valerie watched as the melted wax built up again on the candle.

"I'M SORRY!! PLEASE LET ME GO!!"

"That's not happening, because then you would tell someone or they would notice the condition you're in, and then get me arrested."

"HONEST, I WON'T TELL NO ONE!!"

Valerie squinted her eyes at the man in a deadpan fashion. "...That's a double-negative. So you DO plan on telling someone!"

"NO, NO!! I AIN'T GONNA TELL ANYONE!!" The man frantically insisted.

"Hmm... I don't believe you. But it doesn't matter, because I don't intend to let you go anyway."

"PLEASE LET ME GOOO!!!"

"Whoops!!" The second drop of wax fell upon the man, striking his body right on his ribcage, garnering another scream from him in response.

Chuckling to herself, Valerie brought the candle to her face and extinguished its flame with a puff of breath, placing the stick of wax back on the tray. She took a second needle, and with it pinned his left hand into the cardboard, this one being driven through his wrist. The man screamed and whimpered continuously; Valerie could only imagine the amount of pain that he was in, and she hoped that he did not pass out from it, at least not until she was finished.

"Tape and needles... It's safe to say that your arms aren't going anywhere." Valerie commented, as she took ahold of the third needle after another sip of her drink. "But then we have your legs."

The man bellowed a loud growl behind his clenched teeth.

"Let's start with this one," Valerie said as she jammed the needle through his right foot, pressing the pin deep into the cardboard. The man yelped as she saw blood pour out beneath his sole and drip onto the surface around the impaled needle. "And to complete this..." She took the fourth needle, and like before, thrust it through his left foot and into the cardboard.

"GAAAAAHH!!! STOP!!! PLEASE STOP!!!" The man continued to cry.

Valerie looked at the man's face, and upon noticing something upon it pulled herself closer to the man. Her mind was not playing tricks on her; the mugger had started to actually cry, tears pouring from his eyes like water from a cliff. If she had any empathy, she would have felt somewhat sorry for him. If she had any mercy, she would have put him out of his misery then.

Instead, she smiled at him, before spitting a bit of saliva upon his face.

As he quickly shook his head in an attempt to rid his head of her fluid--a difficult task considering his arms being unusable--she retrieved the scalpel and made a deep cut on his left arm, where the limb met the shoulder. The mugger hollered as crimson fluid erupted from within, spilling out onto the cardboard, with more and more being pumped onto the pooling liquid. From there, she made a long, deep cut along the arm, from his shoulder to the tape at his wrist, completely splitting that arm open and exposing the flesh inside to the air. All the while, he screamed at the top of his tiny lungs; Valerie was astounded that he still has any of it left in him, but it was the surest way to tell that he had not yet passed out.

She spent the next several minutes making more incisions upon his tiny body, cutting small but still painful gashes in his skin, interspersed with quick sips of her cherry juice. Each incision she made, she did her best to inflict it as slowly and as painfully as possible, and each stroke did not disappoint. His continuous agony was like music to her ears, which she relished in as she went for the next cut. Between them, he continued to plead with her for mercy, even though she had long since demonstrated that no such thing would occur.

"Haven't you learned yet?" Valerie scolded the mugger. "We're far past the point in which I could let you go. It's like the... wait, what was it called... Event horizon, yeah! We're past that and the only way left to go is towards your inevitable conclusion."

"THEN JUST KILL ME THEN!!!" It seemed as if the mugger had finally given up. "ANYTHING TO STOP THIS!!!"

"Slow down, dumbass," Valerie chided. "You'll die when I'm ready for you to. I still have things I want to do to you. ...Like cut your chest open."

"WHAT!? STOP!!!" He yelled as the blade bore down upon its chest.

"Back in my high school bio, we had to cut frogs open and study their insides," Valerie said. "Back then, I never thought I'd end up doing the same with humans, especially live humans. But..." She made a straight horizontal cut below his ribcage. "It's more fun when they're alive."

From the center of that bleeding gash, she made a second, downward cut, slicing past his navel and ending near his waist. There, she made another horizontal cut from one end of his body to the other.

"Perfect..." Valerie purred. She went to drink her juice again, after which she examined her glass, shaking it slightly as the remaining contents splashed about inside. "Hm... Almost gone..."

"GAAAH- DAMMIIIIIT!!!" The man hollered as he beat the back of his head against the cardboard.

Using the flat end of the scalpel's blade, she worked it under the cut sheets of skin and flipped them open like a window, bringing the man's internal organs into view: his stomach, his liver, his intestines, and such. Additionally, blood was starting to pool inside; at this point, the man had lost way too much blood, more than she thought possible without succumbing to the loss. It was somewhat tragic, as she still had more plans for him--especially with the matches--but it appeared that she was running out of time.

"Just hang in there a bit longer," she told the whimpering mugger as she retrieved the candle from before. Breaking off another match from the matchbox, she struck it ablaze, which she used to ignite the candle again.

The flame was held suspended over the man's open body cavity, though unlike before, he did not react at all. His head laid flat on the cardboard, as if he had truly and completely given up and was awaiting the merciful embrace of death. Still, he was alive, and that meant that he could still feel pain. She licked her lips as melted wax once again started to gather on the candle below the fire.

"This could have all been avoided if you had just minded your own business," Valerie told the man. "If you were younger and, well, actually hot, I would have kept you around for a lot longer. Mind, you would have been killed eventually."

The man did not respond in any verbal way.

"I would have either stepped on you," Valerie continued as she waited for the wax to build up. "Or eaten you. Or squeezed you in my hand. Or... well, this."

"Urgh..." The man moaned.

"The only mystery would have been: how long would it take for me to do it? With most of the guys I acquire, they usually last a week or two; a few even go as far as a month. Sometimes I get a bit too excited and smash them the same night I get them."

The drop of wax became larger and larger, just barely hanging onto the candle.

"Here it comes...!" Valerie announced as she anticipated what would happen next.

Indeed, the melted wax broke from the candle and fell into his cavity. The once-defeated man immediately came back to life as he screamed in agony, his tiny body squirming from the intense pain that he was no doubt experiencing. After all, without his protective-but-still-weak layer of skin, now his very organs themselves were under attack. Valerie smiled as another drop of wax fell inside, triggering another violent reaction from the man. His internal organs were directly burned from both drops of hot wax, and it appeared that the intense pain combined with his blood loss was just about to send the man into shock.

"I guess we've reached your limit," Valerie said as she nonetheless kept the candle suspended over his chest. "...Oh well."

She lowered the flame right into his open chest, holding the candle in place just long enough for the flame to spread into his body. At this point, the man's screaming had become subdued; his face was contorted in a clear expression of extreme agony, but barely a sound was being emitted, or at least, not a sound that Valerie could discern.

She sighed with a pout. "No more screams? Bummer..."

Still, after extinguishing the candle's flame, Valerie took ahold of her glass of juice and watched as the fire within the man spread, inside and even outside of the opening on his chest. Though he could no longer cry out in pain, his body language told the whole story, as it writhed in pain, or as much as it could, considering its bound limbs. Having such intense pain inside of his body was something that could only truly be like Hell: extreme agony with no hope of escape.

Though without his screams, it was a rather disappointing climax. She may have spent too much time toying with him before setting him ablaze. Maybe next time, she thought.

Seconds later, the small man's body fell limp, and he himself became lifeless as the flame kept spreading; perhaps his time was finally up. Valerie was somewhat impressed at how long he lasted, and how much punishment he took before he finally succumbed to his wounds. Though at this point, Valerie had to hurry and extinguish him before the flame spread any further and caused problems for her.

Especially now with her glass of delicious cherry juice being completely depleted.

The man was well on his way to death, but just to be sure of it, she grabbed the final needle and, with pinpoint accuracy, plunged it right through his skull.



------>

Vignette #7 - The Longest Journey

It must have been days. Maybe even a week at that point.

Toby was not completely sure; he had lost track of time. Nonetheless, he spent all of that time wandering naked upon this massive expanse of a suburban house's floor. Everything around him stretched out for miles; even reaching the next room proved to be a long process requiring constant breaks and rest, risky acts in such a dangerous environment.

His body was exhausted, as was his mind. His stomach growled like a hungry lion, and he preferred not to think about what he had to consume to keep himself hydrated.

The house was empty and eerily quiet; nothing but the sounds of the occasional passing car interrupted his weary thoughts. The owner of the house was absent, likely off at her place of employment and otherwise living her own life, while Toby himself struggled to survive and escape.

At present, he stumbled across the wooden floor of the house's front hallway, its door looming high towards the sky-light ceiling above him. It must have taken him days to come this far from the back bedroom, but he had finally reached what could have been his escape from this gigantic prison. Unfortunately, he also noticed that there was a small step leading up to the door. However, for him, this "small" doorstep was the height of a three-story building, and he had no hope of climbing such a steep wall.

He sighed. This way was no good, and after it seemed like he had finally obtained his freedom. However, he knew that there was a second exit: the backdoor via the kitchen. He had no other choice; it was time for yet another long journey. Luckily, the entrance to the kitchen was relatively near, to his right after turning around. Still, at his size, it would take hours for him to reach it.

Might as well start now, he thought.


The light of the sun shining through the curtained windows in the living room to his left had since shifted in the time he started his trek towards the kitchen, perhaps two or three hours worth. From what he could tell, it appeared that it was the late afternoon. Which meant that it was soon time for the owner of the house--and the cause of his current pitiful state--to return.

His slow, tired gait had not given him much headway towards his destination at all. There were actual bugs that could crawl faster than he could currently move; such a thought made him feel even more pathetic. A human could not outpace an insect? How utterly ridiculous! But then again, so was the idea that anyone was even capable of reducing him to such a state before he experienced it firsthand.

Soon, he heard familiar noise from beyond the door: the sound of a vehicle pulling in and parking, its door opening and then closing, the honk of the horn confirming that it had been locked. Then, approaching footsteps followed by the metallic sounds of the doorknob being fiddled with.

There was no mistaking just what was about to happen next, and the door swung open to confirm it.

Valerie had returned.

The young and pretty Asian woman closed and locked the door behind her as she walked inside, her footsteps like thunder, her eyes focused dead ahead and seemingly unaware that a minuscule man was on the floor near her.

Luckily, her passing feet--clad in red flats--were well away from where he presently stood, and she went on towards the back, covering the distance in seconds what it took him days to travel.

Toby was relieved for once; he had had many close calls--including that very morning--which threatened to reduce him to a mere stain on the bottom of her foot, but he managed to avoid each of them. He did not know if he was just lucky, or if it was an act of cruel mercy on part of fate, but any chance he had at survival was one he would not pass up.

As he continued his long trek, his mind once again thought back to the night that changed everything. It was a typical Friday night, and he had just left his friends to "explore the joints", though he and his friend knew that he was simply seeking a young lady whose bed he would be sharing that night. Though by his own admission, he's not the best-looking guy around, with his plain features and untoned body, and while he struck out more than he would have liked, he usually eventually found someone willing to put up with him for the night.

That night, Valerie was that person, or so it seemed. Perhaps that such a pretty young woman was interested in him should have been the first warning, but as they say: "Hindsight is 20/20." Besides, he had never succeeded in landing an Asian woman before, despite having a mild attraction towards them, so he jumped at the chance at bunking with her.

Things seemed to be going fine even well into her bedroom. He had even completely stripped of his clothing, from head to toe. Needless to say, he was ready and eager to engage in relations with her.

But at that moment, everything changed.

~~~

Valerie snickered, before covering her mouth with her hand and starting to giggle. It seemed as if her attention was focused on his crotch.

"What's so funny?" Tony asked as he stood aside her bed. "Hope it's not what I think it is."

"Well, I'm just used to bigger guys," she said as she reclined on her bed.

''Bigger guys'? How much bigger can she take it?' He thought, and then spoke, "Look, it may not be as big as some guys', but it gets the job done."

"Hmm... I wonder," she said in a patronizing manner.

"I'll prove it to you," he said as he approached her bed.

"Whoa, hold up!" Valerie held out her palm. "I've changed my mind."

"Oh, come on!" Toby exclaimed. "Don't pull the rug out from under me!"

"Well, I'm having another idea, and I think it'll be fun, at least for me."

"Really? What do you have in mind?"

Valerie chuckled, before she pointed at him. Then, a bright flash of light briefly blinded him, leaving him confused as to its source until he realized that a drastic change was occurring to his body: it was shrinking. Indeed, the room around him expanded at an astonishing rate, with Valerie herself well out of his line of sight, the bed rising above him, and leaving him staring into the darkness underneath the bed.

Toby was stunned still, but once he fully took in what had happened, he gave in to baffled rage. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME!?" He yelled up towards the bed.

Valerie's head peeked out over from the bed. Her dark eyes scanned the floor, as if they were trying to locate him, even in the darkness of her room.

"Oh, damn," she said. "I think I may have overdone it this time. My mind kept saying the word 'tiny', and I guess the spell listened."

"CHANGE ME BACK NOW!!!" Toby shouted.

"...Hm. Are you trying to talk to me? I can't hear you if you are. Wow..."

"DAMMIT, YOU BITCH!! CHANGE ME BACK!!"

"Well, whatever. You're not my type, anyway," she said in a matter of fact manner. "In more ways than one."

Toby gnashed his teeth in anger.

"Tonight was a waste." Valerie sighed in disappointment. "...Oh well. Might as well get ready for bed."

Her head retreated from view, only for it to be replaced by the soles of her bare feet seconds later, which both then fell towards the floor, and towards him. Toby screamed and bolted behind him, attempting to save his own hide from meeting such a grisly fate.

As luck would have it, he just very narrowly avoided being flattened by her right foot as it landed on the floor with a deafening thud. The shockwave that her footfall generated still managed to knock him right off of his feet, however.

"I wonder if I crushed him?" Valerie wondered aloud as she exited the room. "I couldn't even feel it. I guess I'll check my foot in the bathroom."

Toby was left glaring in anger at the doorway in the distance, his body shaking in both fear and rage.

"S-she did that on purpose!" He muttered to himself. "Fuckin' psycho bitch!! GAAAHH!!"

~~~

Ever since, Toby's existence has only consisted of two things: surviving and escaping.

Even leaving the bedroom was an ordeal, especially with the repeated risks of being crushed under Valerie's passing feet. The same rung true with the hallway. He was so tiny that he was unable to escape her path in time and had to hope--and pray--that he would come out of their encounter unscathed.

The easy solution would be to walk against the wall, where it would normally be much safer from the giant woman. However, that also posed its own risk: the two of them were not the only ones inhabiting the house, as Valerie's house was currently also home to a mouse. He had seen the rodent scurrying about many times, and from his own experience, mice tended to stick to the walls as they wandered about due to their poor eyesight.

Even at his size, it was possible that the mouse could smell him and then make a meal of him. Toby wanted to lessen any chance of encountering it, and that meant staying away from the walls, and thus, in Valerie's path. A catch-22, if he ever saw one.

Valerie knew about the rodent; Toby had heard her vent her frustrations about it, though he was not sure what measures she was taking to be rid of it.

His long journey towards the kitchen continued on, trying his best to focus on his ultimate destination as opposed to his possible demise via a handful of ways. Though the sounds of approaching footsteps from the distance interrupted his concentration.

"Oh boy..." Toby mumbled as he nervously watched the back hall's entryway.

Sure enough, Valerie reemerged from within, having shed her workclothes for a tanktop and shorts. Her bare feet carried her across the room, making her way towards the kitchen--the very kitchen that Toby was struggling to reach--in seconds. Again, she appeared to be completely incognizant of his presence on the floor. He had since been wondering if she was aware that he was still alive, or if she had assumed that he had died in some way. Or perhaps she had forgotten about him completely. Whatever was the case, she did not seem concerned with him at all and went on about her own business as if he was never there.

Inside, he could see her open the refrigerator and pull out some sort of beverage, as well as wrapped food. Soon after, he could hear the microwave being activated--no doubt to warm up the aforementioned food--as she poured herself a cup of the drink. Watching this made his stomach howl; his mouth watered as much as it could just thinking of even getting a scrap of that food for himself, and the cold drink would be a vast improvement--and much healthier--over what he had been drinking.

After pouring her drink, Valerie walked to the left side of the kitchen, further back inside and out of Toby's sight. He heard her sigh in a rather annoyed tone, muttering something about a "trap", before she returned to the microwave. Soon, the appliance rung to signal the completion of its heating process, and after she took both her cup and the plate of food in both hands, she sat down at the wooden table, propped her smartphone on its stand, and began to indulge herself in her small feast, her hands shifting focus between her silverware, her cup, and her phone. Occasionally, she would chuckle at or comment on something she observed on her phone.

Toby did his best to block out everything from her end to focus squarely on his journey.

To his left, he saw the furry grey invader dart from the living room and rush towards the back hall, staying against the walls as it did so. Valerie appeared to be completely unaware of this short event.

His legs felt like jelly, having been in constant movement for hours on end. He wanted to take rest, but he knew that as long as she was up and about, doing so would be highly dangerous, leaving him completely vulnerable--moreso, at least--to Valerie's walking about. No, he would have to tough it out, at least until she went to bed for the night.

Eventually, Valerie finished her meal; she stood up from the table and carried her plate and cup to the sink. There, she rinsed off both pieces along with the silverware and then place them into the sink.

"I'll get these later," Valerie said to herself. "...It's a lot in here, though."

Afterwards, she turned around and after retrieving her smartphone from the table, went to exit the kitchen.

Her gait was taking her right in Toby's direction.

"Not again...!" Toby complained.

Despite the fact that she was walking at a regular pace, she was still moving so fast, and he was so tiny, that he had no hope of escaping her path. All he could do was hope that he once again escaped this unknown encounter unscathed.

She drew closer, looming over him like a mindbogglingly-huge skyscraper, so much so that it was almost dizzying. The floor shook more violently with each approaching step, and soon, he found himself looking up at the pale sole of her foot.

"No!!" Toby screamed as he instinctively went to run in the opposite way, but it was no use. Her foot came down with a deafening crash around him.

...However, he quickly found that--in another show of fate's cruel mercy--her foot fell in such a way that he wound up in the space between her big and second toes. Just as quickly as her foot came down did it lift back up, and Valerie continued on across the hall into the living room.

Toby's heart was racing as he fell to his bottom. Once again, he had survived an encounter with this unhinged, giant woman. He hoped that his luck would continue to hold out, at least until he managed to earn his escape from this domestic prison.

From the living room, he heard the sound of the television emanate through the air. It sounded as if some sort of sitcom was currently airing, going by the witty dialogue and the tired-but-true laugh track. He had gotten used to this; just about every day after work, she would flip on the television after a short meal and spend a few hours inside. Perhaps not the most productive thing, but after a long day at work, he could hardly blame her.

He did the same thing after working his own job. He wanted to escape so he would be able to do so again.

With a deep breath, he staggered back to his feet and continued his long journey towards the kitchen, wherein the final long leg of his trek would begin.

With the passing of the hour, Toby has finally crossed into the kitchen of Valerie's small home. As he staggered inside, he looked around at his surroundings; the kitchen itself was rather unremarkable and--dare he say it--on the small side. However, at his size, it was still quite massive. It could perhaps take another day at least for him to walk through it and reach the back door.

Said door was quite a ways away to his left, and as he attempted a closer look at the door's bottom, he could see no sign of a doorstep like there was at the front door. Indeed, it appeared that this would be his one shot at freedom, and he had to do whatever it took to get there unharmed. That hinged on Valerie staying as far away from him as possible.

He sighed tiredly. His legs were all but spent at that point, and so he needed to rest. However, it was far too risky for him to do so while Valerie was awake. ...Not that his position was without risk to begin with. Regardless, he had no choice but to tough it out until he was sure that Valerie had retired for the night, when he too would take a well-needed rest.

But first, he had to answer nature's call. ...And quench his thirst.


Hours had passed as the blue sky outside transitioned into a beautiful orange and then to darkness soon after. The crickets outside had started to chirp profusely, and nearly all outdoors activity had ceased. The kitchen itself was mostly shrouded in darkness, with the light from the living room's lamp across the hallway providing a small bit of illumination into the room. Through all of that time, Toby kept up his walking, his speed having been reduced tremendously due to fatigue. He felt as if he was about to pass out, and indeed all he wanted to do was collapse onto the floor and fall into a deep slumber.

The sudden rumbling from behind quickly snapped him out of his stupor, and he turned around just in time to see Valerie heading right towards the kitchen from across the small hall. Toby shuddered and watched anxiously, dreading just where her path would carry her; he had managed to make some distance between him and the doorway, but he was still not out of harm's way.

The floor shook with each step as the passing young giant loomed overhead. Her left foot stepped down dangerously close to Toby--enough so that he could feel a slight gust--before she walked on and headed to the sink. Toby sighed yet another breath of relief as he watched her recover her drinking glass. After rinsing it off, she opened the refrigerator and poured herself another glass of that sweet, red beverage that made Toby lick his lips with covetousness. She stood there and consumed her drink, fiddling around with her smartphone between sips. A part of Toby wondered if she knew that he was in the kitchen with her and therefore was teasing him, but he quickly put such superstitions out of his mind. If she knew that he was in there, she more than likely would have ended his life that instant.

Toby decided to do his best to ignore her and continue with his own journey, when a startled shriek from the giant interrupted his own thoughts.

"Ah, that stupid mouse!" Valerie blurted in frustration as she looked towards the bottom of the wall across from her. It seemed that she had caught sight of her other unwanted inhabitant, though it had since disappeared behind the stove before Toby could spot it.

"Ugh, why the fuck hasn't it gotten to that trap yet?" she complained. "I think it ran past it, too." She took another sip from her drink. "If it's not dead tomorrow, then I'm going to have to try something else. Maybe a glue trap, or something."

Valerie finished up her drink, and after rinsing the cup off with water and putting it back into the sink, she then exited the kitchen, her footsteps shaking the floor as she passed. Upon departing, she reached out for the wall to her left and flicked off the lights, leaving the kitchen--and the micro-sized Toby--shrouded in darkness. He listened as the thunder of her footsteps faded away, until he heard the sound of a door shutting in the distance.

"Oh, thank god..." Toby muttered to himself, as he fell to his knees. It was the end of yet another long, tiresome day; Toby knew he still had a lot of work ahead of him, but at least the goal was within sight. Perhaps within the next day, if he really pushed himself, he would finally have his freedom.

Of course, the outside world may prove to be much more dangerous, but at least he would be all but safe from Valerie, and from there, all he had to do was find one of the neighbors, get their attention, and inform them of Valerie's antics. Then, it would be game over for that crazy woman.

But for the moment, he focused on getting his first good rest of the day. As he laid down on the cool, hard floor, he exhaled a tired sigh as drowsiness quickly took hold of him, and he soon drifted off.

~~~

A loud snapping sound roused Toby from his hard slumber. He was not sure what the source of that sound was; did he dream it, or was it something in the kitchen that triggered it? Come to think of it, he could not recall having any sort of dream; it was all a dark space between his sleep and his awakening.

After wiping his eyes and yawning, and once his brain in turn awoke, he deduced that the noise he had heard was the sound of the trap that Valerie had set up going off. Either it had finally caught its mark, or the mouse safely activated it with no harm to itself; he could not be certain of the truth, as mice were known to not only safely trigger traps, but also escape even after being caught by them.

As he slowly staggered to his feet, he took a look around. The otherwise quiet kitchen was bathed in the light of morning twilight, with birds chirping in the outside world beyond the walls. The room carried a bit of a calm, almost-serene air, and for a split moment, Toby had nearly forgotten about his perilous predicament. His eyes focusing on the skyscraper-like closed door off in the distance brought him back to reality.

After relieving and quenching himself, he began that day's long trek. Now seemed like an excellent time to start, as it sounded as if Valerie had not awoken yet. "Alright, let's go," he said to rouse himself.

Even with the night's rest, his legs and feet still ached in fatigue. Toby did his best to keep pushing his body as far and as fast as he could physically muster, even if it felt as if his legs would dissolve at any moment. Indeed, he caught himself stumbling every so often, before he regained his bearings and continued on.

As time passed by, twilight giving away to daylight, Toby wondered what day it was: It had been days since he had been trapped inside of Valerie's house. Was it Saturday, a full week since his terror began? He could not hear any activity from Valerie from deeper inside of the house, meaning that she was not going in to her job that day. He thought upon all of the things he had missed in that week: his job--of which he no doubt had lost by then--his friends, and his family, particularly his father's birthday; his podcasts, the TV shows he was following, playing Call of Duty on his Xbox One after work, even just relaxing in his own, soft bed and eating and drinking actual food.

His desire to get back to those things reinvigorated his drive to escape, to get out and bring Valerie to justice.

With the end of this leg of the journey in sight, he pushed himself even harder than before to reach it as fast as he could.

He panted heavily, but did his best to bear it as his legs went beyond what he had in him to carry him to safety.

Soon, however, he heard the sound of a door opening, followed by distant footsteps, and then another door closing.

"She's up now..." Toby muttered. Indeed, it seemed as if Valerie had finally awoken. She would prove to be a constant danger; he hoped that his luck in her unaware presence would continue to hold out until he reached the end.

He did his best to ignore the machinations of the mad Asian woman as he focused on his own task at hand.

A good several minutes passed, before he heard the door open, and then footsteps again. This time, the steps seemed to be drawing closer to the kitchen from the back. As frightening as it was, Toby expected this to happen eventually: that she would enter the kitchen for breakfast or something to that effect. Luckily, he had wandered rather far away from the doorway at that point, and was drawing closer to the point at where the stove stood, so there was no danger of him getting tread upon by her entrance.

The footsteps grew louder and more thunderous, until Valerie did indeed walk into the kitchen. She donned the same lounging attire as the previous night, as she made a beeline towards the refrigerator.

"Yeah, just stay away from me," Toby anxiously said, his attention drawn to her behind him as he continued to walk forward.

This time, Valerie opened the freezer and pulled out some sort of breakfast roll. She opened its plastic wrapping, and then put the entire package into the microwave, dialing the time and then starting the appliance. Then, she turned around and walked towards the kitchen doorway, as if she was about to leave the room.

"Oh!" she said, just as she had reached the entryway, turning her head towards the stove to her right. "Let me see if that trap actually worked."

With that, she shifted her direction towards the stove. ...And towards Toby.

"Shit!!" Toby blurted as he mustered the strength to scramble out of her way. However, her approach was far faster than he himself could manage even while running. The floor vibrated with greater intensity with each step of her bare feet, each one like thunder beating across the wind.

Valerie loomed almost directly overhead, her eyes focused ahead on the stove and not on the floor directly below her. In his rush to escape, Toby stumbled on his ankles and wounded up tripping on the floor. He attempted to pick himself up... Just as he noticed that a dark shadow had surrounded him.

"No!!" He looked up, just in time to see Valerie's pale sole falling upon him. His heart sank in his chest; it seemed that his luck had finally run out. "NOOOO!!! Not now-"

~~~

Valerie walked across the kitchen, making her way toward the stove. Or, to be more specific, she was targeting the mouse trap that had been set up aside it against the wall for days. She had been rather annoyed that the rodent had avoided the trap for so long, even with the bait set up. At that point, she was prepared to buy glue traps if she had remained unsuccessful in exterminating her unwelcome guest.

She peered over the stove, looking towards the floor.

"...Gotcha," she said with a proud smile. At last, the trap had worked; the grey-brown mouse had been slain, its neck broken by the trap's metal frame. "I'm glad that's over."

Of course, now she had to clean up the mess. She decided to do it after eating her food; it's not as if it was a particularly messy kill, so all she needed were some gloves.

Suddenly, she was reminded of the guy she met last week, the rather boring, average, small guy, whose name she had long since forgotten. The last she saw of him, she had shrunken him to such a small size that she could not even hear him in the bedroom, and she had long since lost track of him. She wondered what became of him, but she quickly deduced that he was dead, either by starvation, crushing, or--maybe--eaten by her furry kill.

She smiled at the dead mouse. "Maybe some good came out of you after all."

The microwave dinged, and she turned around and went to retrieve her breakfast.



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Vignette #8 - The Macrophile

Oliver could not believe what he was seeing.

He rubbed his eyes has hard as he could, wholly expecting his mind to be playing tricks on him, and that he was still in some sort of half-dream, but it turned out, his eyes were not deceiving him. The bedroom he was in was now many times bigger than before, along with all of its furniture, more akin to buildings than the meager props that they were. The room's size, however, had not been expanded, not at all.

He had shrunk.

How did he shrink? His gaze immediately focused upon the giant, very attractive, young Asian woman who stood seemingly hundreds of feet above him. With her hands on her skirted hips, her bare foot--fresh from their strappy sandals--tapped against the floor as she looked down upon him with a proud smirk and dark eyes one could lose themselves in.

She had shrunken him, using some kind of magic or some analogue to it.

Oliver was at a loss of words. His heart was racing and his legs were weak, as his mind kept trying to take in the reality of the situation, but it was all but overwhelming.

However, one thing was clear: His strange predicament of his could be perfectly summed up as...

"...AWESOME!!!" He finally brought himself to shout out with unrestrained glee.

The eyes of the giant woman--whose name was Valerie--widened in apparent surprise. "...What."

"This is awesome!!" Oliver exclaimed. "You actually have the ability to shrink people?!"

Valerie nodded. "Yes, that's right. It's a pretty sweet power, because it allows me to make guys give me what I want." She sounded rather proud to say this.

"A-maz-zing..." Oliver was still in disbelief, his mouth agape in a sort of stupor.

"And that includes you," Valerie said. "I hope you weren't expecting to have sex with me, because I have other plans. If you don't want to end up a splatter on the floor, you'd better do as I say, too."

"Oh, that's fine with me!" Oliver said. "Whatever you would have me do, I'm yours to command!"

"...Okay... ...Well, my feet are tired from being in those heels all night," she said as she sat down on the side of her bed. "Why don't you make yourself useful and pamper them?"

"Yes, my goddess!" Oliver said as he made a beeline towards her right foot.

"...Did you just call me a 'goddess'?" Valerie asked, in a rather mystified tone.

"Yeah, because you are a goddess!" Oliver answered.

"Hm..." she muttered.

Upon reaching Valerie's right foot, Oliver practically threw himself upon it, his hands caressing and massaging her big toe in particular. It was magnificent; he had never seen such a massive flesh-and-blood foot in his life, but there it was, right in front of him, its supple skin in contact with his. It was like a dream come true. No... It was a dream come true.

He could not restrain himself. He went in for a kiss. And another. And then another. He had lost himself in his worship of Valerie's foot, moving from her largest toe to the next one, kissing and even licking its skin as well.

"Are you kissing my foot?" Valerie asked above.

"Yes, goddess," Oliver replied.

"I don't recall telling you to do that."

"But you didn't say not to."

"Uh, I suppose not..."

Oliver grinned to himself as he continued on, his mouth pleasuring the flesh of Valerie's toes. He moved upon, between, and even under each of her toes one-by-one, taking his sweet time to take in each digit. Upon finishing up with her pinky toe, he started the process again, this time starting in reverse from her pinky toe all the way to her big toe once more, making sure to spend as much time as he could on each one in the process.

"Wow, you're really devoted to this," Valerie said in a mild astonishment. "Don't forget my other foot, you ant."

"As you wish, my beautiful goddess," Oliver sang.

Valerie was silent as he made his way to her other foot, whereupon he started again, kissing and licking it skin with as much glee as he could muster. It was rather amazing; he pictured this very scenario in his head many, many times, but had resigned himself to what seemed like the hard truth of such things being nothing more than fantasy, scenarios that were primed to be relegated to the corridors of his mind, or indulged upon via whatever artistic medium he could find online. He could only imagine how jealous the members of his online community would be if they saw him actually worshipping the feet of a giant woman.

Oliver clutched her index toe with both of his hands, and pressed his lips on its unpolished nails with a rather long kiss.

"You're really getting into this," Valerie commented from above. "That's... new."

"Who wouldn't want to throw themselves at your beautiful feet?" Oliver said.

"I'm used to guys doing it out of fear. You're doing it of your own free will."

"Those guys must have been weak. A real man would jump at the chance to worship a young goddess like you." He planted another kiss on her toe.

"I guess you're as real as that blonde hair of yours," Valerie quipped.

"I'm 100% real, my goddess," Oliver replied.

"Whatever. Let's see how 'real' you really are."

As Oliver went for another kiss on her supple flesh, Valerie pulled her foot away from him. Before he knew it, the same foot had charged at him and caught him in its grasp. Clamped between the big and index toes, Oliver's legs swung back and forth as he was lifted off of the floor and suspended in the air. As Valerie crossed her left leg over its right knee, Oliver looked upward, towards her face well past the long stalk of her shin. She wore a small but rather mischievous grin upon her face.

Then, he felt the force upon his tiny body increase as both toes pressed upon him. He briefly let out a yelp as the toes squeezed his body, his ribs bending under the pressure and shooting his body with a sharp yet persistent pain. He gritted his teeth to help bear the agony, but it could only do so much, especially as the force began to increase.

"I could pop you like a grape right now if I wanted to," Valerie warned.

She continued on, not letting up on the torture that she was inflicting upon his body for what Oliver had to assume were minutes. Minutes of sheer agony as his ribcage was pushed to its limit. He let out another scream, finding himself unable to withstand the pain much longer. He was certain that he was mere seconds away from his ribs completely collapsing.

...And yet, he loved every minute of this.

The idea of being treated as nothing more than a hot woman's tiny foot toy was something he dreamed of for many years, ever since he was a young child admiring the feet of the women all around him. He recalled desiring such a thing from his 8th Grade teacher, a late-20s brunette named Mrs. Kelly, whose looks and youth made her especially popular among the boys at school. He remembered being really curious about what her feet looked like--Mrs. Kelly having worn loafers or pumps up until that point--until the final weeks of the school year when summer was approaching; then, his wish was granted as she wore sandals more often than not during those weeks. He was more than satisfied with what he saw, and so desperately wanted to shrink himself down and frolic between her toes, or even be crushed like a bug underneath her foot. It was a fantasy that he replayed in his mind countless times since, well into his adult years, even.

Of course, Valerie was not Mrs. Kelly, but the fact that he's able to experience this deepest desire of his in real life was nothing short of amazing. Despite the pain and the possibility of being only seconds away from death-by-toes, he could feel his manhood stiffening, a clear sign that he was indeed enjoying the experience.

"...More...!" He managed to utter.

"Hm?" Valerie tilted her head inquisitively.

"C'mon...!" He shouted between pained grunts. "Squeeze me harder, goddess!"

"Oh my god!" Valerie seemed taken aback from his suggestion, so much so that her toes' hold upon his body weakened and he eventually plummeted back to the floor.

Combined with his aching body, the impact of striking the hard floor made him reel in pain. Lying on the floor, he caressed his aching body, all the while wearing a satisfied grin on his face, having completely enjoyed the painful experience of being squeezed between a giant woman's beautiful-yet-powerful toes.

Valerie stood up from the bed, once again revealing to him her full, magnificent splendor as her dark eyes stared down at him. Her face told that she was annoyed; perhaps because she had lost her grip of his body? Oliver chose to believe that was the case.

"You're serious, aren't you?" She said.

"What do you mean, my goddess?" Oliver asked.

"I could easily crush you to death right now. That doesn't scare you?"

"Why would I be afraid of dying at the beautiful feet of a beautiful goddess? That would be a divine blessing!"

"Alright, let's see."

Valerie's right foot lifted off of the floor and--after briefly hovering in the air over him--fell upon his tiny body. Oliver did not move or even brace himself for impact; he simply let her soft sole collide with his being and pin him to the floor. Sandwiched between the hard floor and the ball of her foot, he could feel the force upon his body slowly and steadily increase. Once again, his bones began to bend with the pressure; she seemed to be doing her best to draw this alleged crushing out for as long as she could, a sign that she was clearly experienced at the act.

"I don't hear you screaming, you bug!" He heard her voice speak, albeit muffled due to the flesh. "I'm going to crush you flatter than a pancake!"

As the pressure increased, he soon found himself unable to move his limbs at all, not even to caress her supple sole. Even his stiffened crotch was pressed into an uncomfortable degree. It seemed that she truly did intend to squash him like a bug, and why shouldn't she? He was just a lowly insect to her, barely fit to eat the dirt from the bottom of her feet. If she wanted to kill him, it was her right as a goddess to do so.

"I'm serious," Valerie said. "I'm going to crush you."

"Such a goddess," he mused.

He could feel his head starting to be forced onto its side by her might. "Not yet," he said to himself. He did what he could to ward off the attempt, keeping his face pressed into her sole, albeit at a slight angle. With his mouth opened, he extended his tongue and began to lick her sole. It was slightly salty to the taste, a nice flavor, he thought. He continued even as her foot kept pressing down, and in fact started to increase the intensity at which his wet appendage lapped up her flesh.

After several seconds, it appeared that Valerie took notice.

"What the hell!? Are you licking me?!" She exclaimed.

Oliver did not answer; it was not like she could have heard him either way. He simply continued licking her foot, which at that point was only seconds away from reducing him to a gory mural on the floor.

"Stop it, you idiot!"

Suddenly, the pressure on Oliver's body relented, and light once again flowed into his retinas. His aching body still stung from her power, and he did his best to nurse the pain while maintaining the grin on his face. Meanwhile, Valerie stood over him, hands on her hips while she looked down at him with disdain.

"What's wrong with you?!" she asked.

"There's nothing wrong with me, my goddess," Oliver answered. "I'm just very happy to be in your presence."

"Stop calling me a 'goddess'," Valerie demanded. "It's creepy coming from you."

"But I can't change the truth. You are a goddess, and I'd be willing to do or part with anything for you."

"Is that right?" Valerie kneeled down, and then with her left hand picked him off of the floor. She let him roll onto the center of its palm, and watched as he slowly picked himself up.

"You're so beautiful," Oliver complemented as he gazed into her billboard-like face looming over him. "Every man should throw themselves at your feet and let you squash them into paste."

"You're so annoying..." Valerie complained as her right hand reached over, grabbing his left arm in-between its thumb and index finger. "What if I pulled your arms off right now?"

Her massive digits pinched down on his limb, and began to tug slightly at the arm. Oliver felt a very sharp pain in his shoulder as a response; he screamed in agony as his other arm flailed about before reaching over and cupping the aching shoulder in an attempt to ease the pain any way he could.

Valerie's mouth curved into a smile. "That's more like it."

Oliver continued to scream as she pulled even harder on his arm, as if she was liable to indeed tear the arm clear from its socket. Having no arms would no doubt be an inconvenience, but it would be something that he could easily get used to; there were a number of cases of people who were born without arms or lost them in an accident of some sort that adapted to using their feet to carry out their daily tasks, and he could be no different than them. He would just have to work on his flexibility.

"Now you understand," Valerie stated. "I can tear your arm off right now, and your legs too."

"...Yes, my goddess!" Oliver managed to shout between cries. "Whatever you want to take, I'm willing to give to you!"

Valerie let out an audible, annoyed groan. "You can't be serious!" Her grip upon Oliver's arm released, leaving it with a throbbing ache. "You would actually be okay with me tearing out your arms and legs!?"

"You're the goddess," Oliver stated. "Whatever you want to do with me, I would have no choice but to accept it. What can I, a lowly ant at your feet, do to change it?"

Valerie's eyes glared at his tiny form for several seconds, the room completely silent except for Oliver's breathing. Even the night beyond the bedroom windows was without any sound, as if the whole world had stopped, awaiting to hear or see what Valerie would do next.

"...If I picked my nose and told you to eat it, would you do it?" She finally asked.

"Yes, my goddess," Oliver answered with honesty.

"Ugh, you're so lucky my nose is clean right now."

"Well, there's only one thing to do: Keep me around as your tiny slave until it builds up in there, and you can then prepare me a nice boogery feast!" Admittedly, even Oliver found this rather vile to imagine, but if the goddess willed it...

However, Valerie seemed to gag in disgust at this suggestion.

"Alright, that's it." As she stood back up, her fingers wrapped around his body, cloaking him in darkness.

He could feel movement as he heard her bare feet slapping against the floor, clearly a sign that Valerie was walking. Where was she taking him? He had not the slightest idea, but he figured that he would find out soon enough. He hoped that it was somewhere where he could be contained for a while, so he could at least get some rest before servicing her again tomorrow. After all, until then, he had given up hope that he would ever be able to live out his macrophile fantasies, but life had thrown him a curveball, and so he hoped to indulge himself for as long as possible. Or rather, for as long as the goddess Valerie willed it.

Soon, the movement along with the footsteps came to an end, and the pillar-like fingers unfurled, allowing him to see once more. As expected, their location had changed, and going by the mirror over the medicine cabinet, the shower glass, and the sink, they were clearly in her bathroom.

"What are we doing in your bathroom, goddess," Oliver asked.

"Shut up." Valerie's disdainful look persisted as she continued to stare at him, before he started to feel an increasing incline beneath him.

He looked behind him, only to realize that her hand was tilting at an ever-increasing degree, until the inevitable happened and he began to freefall. He had just enough time to look where he was headed before he arrived there with a splash of water: after being briefly submerged, he swam back to the surface, where he flailed and struggled to stay afloat. With the tall white, circular marble wall around him, there was only one place where he could be: the toilet.

High above, Valerie continued to glare at him, her eyes a mixture of annoyance and disgust, until she reached over above and pressed down on something beyond his sight. The sound of the toilet flushing quickly solved that mystery as the water around him began to rapidly circle around, taking him along with its flow. Oliver did not even try to fight it, as he knew it was pointless; he was being flushed down the toilet like a piece of shit, to be discarded and forgotten about. It was definitely not his ideal way to go, and he was rather disappointed that she chose to end things like this, but in the end, she was the goddess, and as he had established, whatever she wanted to do to him, he would have no choice but to go along with it.

At the very least, he had the memories of being her tiny foot-slave--if only briefly--as he the rapid flow of water pulled out of the light and into the pipes, his lungs eventually filling up with water before blacking out.


Valerie watched as the water completely flushed down the toilet, taking with it that strange and creepy man that she had lured into her trap. She had no idea the turn things would take, but it soon became clear: this man had to go, and she was not going to do it in a manner that he'd actually enjoyed.

She let out an annoyed sigh. "It's not fun when they actually want me to mess with them. ...What a waste of time."

With that creep sent down to his watery grave, she turned around and exited the bathroom, turning off its light as she departed.



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