I stood at the base of a titanic high heeled shoe, dwarfed by the column rising up before me.  The first indentation was around my waist, and the shoe itself towered high above me.  Reaching where the heel connected to the rest of the shoe would take at least half an hour, not to mention climbing the rest of the patent leather pump in front of me.  I had done this several times before though, and I kept returning to this particular shoe for some reason.

Why did Gina need high heels, anyway?  At over ten feet she was the tallest recorded woman – and probably the tallest human alive, though I hadn’t exactly been able to keep up with that statistic for the past few years.  These were fairly worn to boot, with the heels blossoming out at the bottom from thousands of impacts and the otherwise shiny exterior marred in several places by scuffs.  They made her calves look amazing, sure, but with Gina’s involvement in sports I doubted that was a prescient concern for her.  Did she really need another six inches to make her calves pop, though?

I looked back to the terrarium I usually lived in.  Probably several of its newer inhabitants were watching me with intense interest, dreaming of the relative freedom I had.  Every time Gina put me back in there I discovered that it was an even split between the older people shrunken to life inside Gina’s terrarium, like Roni and Will, and the more recent additions to the menagerie.  Years ago though I had made it a policy to not even learn the names of the more recent additions, understanding that they were on a brief stop between their normal life and being subject to whatever whim Gina had that day.  Regardless, I couldn’t see any of the fellow shrinking victims watching me from inside their glass cage.

It was still a mystery as to why they regarded me as a hero, anyway.  Some of the long-term ones even tried to treat me like a cult leader, which I immediately tried to dissuade.  I couldn’t think of any creature who deserved worship less than Gina, but apparently some people regarded her as a goddess of some sort.  Offering rooms in my dilapidated house had won over some more people, but I didn’t think it was anything special.  Any decent person would have done it, and in the end, it was just one more layer between us and the titaness who insisted on keeping tabs on us constantly.  Maybe it was simply being here four years longer than anyone else provided me with a certain amount of reverence.

Off to the side I saw a pile of discarded clothes, an unusual treat for the expeditions I mounted.  I hurried toward the mass of cloth, stumbling over the soft carpet fibers as I went, to see what this could have in store.  The black fabric contrasted with the white carpet, and briefly I stood in front of the clothing while trying to decide what to do.  A flash of white in the middle caught my attention, and I decided to investigate.

The first obstacle was a pile of black nylon, easily overcome thanks to my extensive experience by now of either climbing the fabric, or clinging to it for dear life.  After that was a hill of denim, wrinkled and dimpled by how it had fallen.  I struggled up the black contours in front of me, using the minute lines in her jean shorts as brief handholds to propel myself upward.  Though I had become used to scaling immense objects by now I was glad that it was a short climb, and after only a minute I had crested the waistband of the cast-off shorts.

Standing atop the black shorts, I saw nothing else to grab onto so that I could ease my descent.  The small shock of white I’d spied from the floor, I realized now, was the tag of Gina’s panties, black like the vast majority of her clothing.  Much like the heels I didn’t understand why she wore so much black.  Was she trying to dominate the goths as well, figuring they would be an easy subculture for her to bring back to the terrarium, or did she simply enjoy how it made her look?  In any case, there was a pile of black around me that stuck out against the rest of Gina’s room.

I heard the front door slam shut, a dull thud coming from downstairs that was impossible for someone in my situation to ignore.  It took Gina an average of twenty seconds to go from the front door to her room, and I evaluated my situation in the meantime.  Getting caught here was out of the question: if Gina thought I was admiring her panties I would never hear the end of it.  Honestly, being among her clothes would probably be just as bad.  I looked around for somewhere to hide so that it would look that I was just exploring without having to worry about her jumping to conclusions from it.

Footsteps began thudding up the stairs, and I was running out of time.  Instinctively I fell backward, falling down the mound of denim I had just crested, to land amid the soft nylon of her black stockings.  I could scarcely even stand up before the footfalls from the staircase died off, replaced by the firm yet steady rumblings of the giantess walking on the other side of the door.  Three footsteps, it should be, then she would be very nearly upon us.

Right on cue the doorknob started turning, just when I had pressed myself up against the indomitable wall of her shorts.  I peeked around the edge and saw the door swing open, revealing Gina’s towering body on the other side.  She stooped her way through the doorframe, narrowly avoiding hitting her blond hair on the top as she entered, the vibrations from her steps resonating through the room.  Despite everything else, the last thing I wanted was for her to notice me just now.

Gina had come a long way since I had been so unceremoniously given to her almost six years ago.  Not only had she grown over two feet since then, but she had filled out significantly as well.  Her breasts dwarfed any others I had seen despite being a perfect fit for her body, and her frame was supported by over a decade of playing sports.  She still tied her long hair into a pair of braids, and her soft blue eyes belied the cruelty she inflicted every day.  Gina’s legs were enormous yet slender, the perfect mix of long and developed.  Everything about her enormous size said that she should be borderline monstrous to the casual observer, but even to me she looked downright pleasant.  By now though, I knew that looks could be deceiving.

The ground trembled from the heavy footfalls of Gina’s black-stockinged feet as she walked to the terrarium – she had developed a habit of making her movements as impactful as possible in order to create awe among her prisoners.  Gina placed her hands on the top glass panel and pressed down, making the whole structure creak.  “Hello again, bugs!” she declared, her low voice turned into a booming cacophony by virtue of her sheer size.  “Your goddess has returned, and She brings a gift!”  Her hand slid into her purse, and when she withdrew it a tiny person was clenched between her fingers, their form thrashing violently in a futile attempt to escape.

With her free hand Gina opened the roof.  Slowly, as though she cared whether the newcomer lived or died, she lowered them into the enclosure, guiding them downward until their feet touched the plastic floor.  Then she released her new toy and withdrew her hand before leaning forward against the glass.  “Now, where is My high priest to welcome her to the flock?”  Shit.  I hadn’t expected her to bring someone new in today.

Several years ago, when her enclosure first contained five shrunken people, Gina had begun styling herself a goddess.  None of us bought into it at the time, and her attempt at megalomania was further stymied by her sister living in the room.  She was never one to let minor setbacks like reality get her down, however, and declared that there were two goddesses – she, of course, being the good and powerful one, while Jess was evil and wanted only their destruction.  Everyone else from back then was dead at Gina’s hands now, and newer additions began to seriously buy into the insanity.  They declared me Gina’s high priest, since my longevity must be a sign of her favor, despite my frequent and vociferous protests.  Gina, for her part, found the whole thing amusing, and only encouraged them.

By now it was at the point where I didn’t even bother to dispute her absurd claims, and was honestly running out of ways to do so.  My memories from before being shrunk were getting fuzzy while images of Gina towering over me remained at the fore.  For every time I remembered her being just a little taller than me, there were a dozen instances of her dangling me in front of her face or holding her foot above me to block out the light.  I was starting to doubt the former even existed, and that Gina was, if not a goddess, at least a giantess.

“Hm.  I don’t see him in here.”  Gina’s powerful voice broke me out of my contemplation, returning me to the world where I was very much in danger.  She was looking back and forth around the glass case for any sign of me.  Hopefully my fellow inmates didn’t tell her anything.  One of her knees touched the floor when she knelt next to a corner, and with one finger she lifted the rope I had used to climb down.  Another finger pinched around it, and with a firm yank she pulled it free.  There went any chance I had of slipping back in unnoticed.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, pipsqueak!” she called.  She was trying to sing it, but everything that came out of her mouth sounded like intense bass to me.  Gina turned around, the ground shaking from even her minor adjustments.  Her eyes scanned the floor looking for me, and I pressed myself into her clothes.  “Don’t make Me use My divine powers to find you.”  Obviously she had no divine powers, but she wasn’t about to announce that. 

I knew it wasn’t a matter of if she found me, but when, and began looking for ways to prolong the inevitable.  Right now I was practically in the open, and with how clean she kept her room there were precious few hiding spots for me.  Maybe I could wait for her to go past me and hide under her bed, that ought to buy me a few minutes at least.

Shockwaves emanated from Gina’s feet as she strode forward, placing herself between me and the bed.  Suddenly her feet shot backward, replaced by her knees while she got down on all fours.  Still unable to see under, she laid down fully on the carpeted floor to look at the dark crevice beneath her bed.  With the mountain of a woman between me and my hiding spot, there was no way I’d make it.

Gina surveyed the space between her bed for a bit, and gave the frame a good shake to make sure I wasn’t hiding behind the legs.  Once she confirmed I was nowhere to be found, her tremendous palms pounded on the floor so that she could push herself up.  When she was back to her gargantuan height she turned toward me, her enormous feet nearly landing on me from what I thought was quite some distance.  “Guess I should clear this debris,” she remarked, looking just past me.  Just like that, I was about to lose what little cover I had.

A titanic foot shot forward, and with a loud clap the shorts I was pressed up against were thrown away.  Suddenly off balance, I staggered backward a few steps while Gina pulled her foot back.  By the time I had recovered, she had placed her stockinged feet so that I was almost exactly between them.  I looked up her enormous legs and saw the tips of her slender fingers resting just above the bottom of her short shorts.  Her black shirt was pulled tight all around her, accentuating her bosom, and beyond that, almost at the ceiling, was a pair of baby blue eyes.  They were looking right at me.

“Well, well, well,” she began, her triumphant voice nearly overpowering me on its own.  “What’s this?  Is My high priest trying to escape again, abandoning his flock?  Do you hate My divine grace so much that you want to leave it?”  The corner of her mouth curved up in a smirk.  “Or is it the opposite?  Are you so enamored with Me that when I’m gone you only want to cozy up to something of Mine?  Were you trying to climb into My panties?”  Her smirk disappeared as suddenly as it came.  “Either way, I don’t like it.”

Gina lifted her foot off the ground and swiftly closed the gap between it and me.  I didn’t try to run or flee: I had learned long ago that there was no point, and I had no chance of outpacing her legs.  Her heel set down with a thud, and the black mesh taut against her foot darkened my sky.  A snap rang out when it swung down, crumpling me beneath her arch.  There wasn’t even enough time to raise my hands in a feeble attempt to stop her.

Vibrations coursed through the foot pinning me down, the kinesthetic results of her chuckling.  Gina’s gargantuan foot had utterly defeated me, and I winced from pain when she pressed down.  The soft skin above me was the only reason I hadn’t been instantly crushed, and Gina knew it.  She had gotten very good at squishing me without actually crushing me.  Unfortunately, this also meant she knew how to make the experience extremely uncomfortable.

The stifling pressure lasted far longer than I would have liked, the heat from her sole creating a very small convection oven around me.  When she lifted her foot I was briefly stuck to the nylon, and my short fall back to the floor was just another humiliation heaped upon the considerable pile.  After a few seconds my vision cleared, and I saw that Gina was grinning down at me, her big toe just missing my legs.

“Something looks different about you though,” she said.  “You look… smaller than usual.”  Oh no, not this again.  Every time Gina grew so much as an inch she went through this.  “Are you shrinking?”  She knelt down, placing her knee close enough that I could see the mesh of her stocking.  Her hand descended shortly after, plucking me up between her thumb and forefinger.  My stomach fell and I nearly retched while she stood, lifting me up to her face while she did so.

Under the scrutiny of her giant blue eyes I somehow felt even smaller, which I’m sure was her intent.  She set me down in her open palm and continued looking me over, a mischievous light apparent in her eyes.  “Yeah, you are!”  Gina was making an effort to stay somewhat quiet, but any speaking at this distance would be painful.  “You’re getting so small, I love it.”

Gina chuckled, and I knew what was coming.  She faked a gasp and said, “Oh wow, and you’re getting even smaller!”  Right on cue Gina doubled, tripled in size, turning her gentle blue eyes into glaring orbs.  “I can actually see you shrinking in real time!”  Her face continued to expand, and around me her had was turning into a landmass.  The deep creases of her palm became trenches and canyons, while the minute whorls of her skin turned to ditches lined by deep ridges.  She blinked, making an audible click, demonstrating that her eyelashes were now wider than I was tall.

At this size, Gina seemed more like a landscape than a person, and I could scarcely deny she was at least as powerful as a goddess like this.  Every minute twitch on her face, like the wobble of her pupils as she tried to focus on me, was imminently apparent, and each component of her face seemed to be an individual entity rather than part of a single unit.  No matter where I looked, in every direction there was nothing but the alabaster skin of my captor, interrupted in some places by immense straw-colored hairs.

“You’re actually too small for Me to see now,” she remarked.  Her voice was little more than a low, primal rumble that resembled a series of explosions from her throat, but she had done this enough that I could understand the words as long as I concentrated.  “Hold on, I’ll get a magnifying glass so I don’t lose your pathetically tiny body.”  The world seemed to rotate around me as she turned toward her desk on the far side of the room where she often brought shrunken people to play with them.

Before she could take a step, however, I was overwhelmed by a buzzing that made everything in my head vibrate along with it.  With lightning quickness Gina grabbed a phone in her other hand and put it up to her ear.  “Oh, hey Kristie!”  I covered my ears to shield them from the explosive voice that threatened to split my head in two, but even with the protection I could still feel my bones rattling.  “Yeah, I can’t text right now anyway, so no worries.  No, I’m not busy – I’m never too busy for you!  Sure, come on over, the door’s unlocked.  Just remember to take your shoes off at the door, okay?  Seeya soon!”  With a press of her thumb she hung the phone up and tossed it onto the bed.

“Looks like it’s your lucky day, tiny, you get to meet one of my friends!” Gina exclaimed.  “It’s too bad you shrank so much though, since I don’t think she’ll be able to see you.  I’ll make sure you two get acquainted, though.  I really think you’ll enjoy meeting her!”  I didn’t have to see her tremendous lips to know that she was smiling malevolently, and that I would not, in fact, enjoy meeting Kristie.

From deep within the canyon spanning Gina’s palm I looked into the enormous concentric circles of the single eye I could focus on at a time.  The dark void of her pupil was more than capable of engulfing me were it not for her cornea protecting it, and the tiny flecks throughout her blue iris were easily my size, if not larger.  I tried to focus on anything else, but consistently found myself drawn back to the gigantic splash of color in the middle of her bright white skin.

Gina helped me out of that predicament, lowering me away from her gaze.  Though her hand moved slowly the world still rushed by, and I felt as though I were on an elevator rushing to the ground floor.  Luckily she didn’t drop me all the way to the carpet, stopping me just in front of her immense lips.  They stretched forever on either side, luscious and pink, just like her older sister’s.  Hundreds of feet up the two dark pits of her nostrils hovered over me, the rounded cartilage of its tip extending beyond my view.

A blast of hot air from above knocked me prone, and I fell back into the trench across her palm.  “I can’t believe I never introduced you to Kristie before,” Gina said with her rumbling cacophony.  Her breath carried a cloud of her breath with it, which kept me uncomfortably warm despite smelling rather pleasant.  “She’s been My best friend since like second grade, I even gave her a growth spurt when she wanted to try out for basketball with me.  There was no way her little five-foot-three ass was gonna make the team, so I shot her up by two feet.  But, I guess I just like keeping you to Myself too much.”

The indomitable berm of pursed lips pulled tight in a terrifying smile at her own self-satisfied joke.  In a twisted sense she had a point, as she often did.  In the year that she had been “taking care” of me I hadn’t left the house once, and rarely left the room – even then, only if she carried me.  I hadn’t seen a new face aside from my fellow shrinkees for that whole time.  After a while I simply thought that Gina acted the same way at school that she did with us, and had no friends because of it, but it figures there would be a small cadre of girls she could use to her advantage, probably equally unpleasant.

“I’m just trying to think where I can put your miniscule little body so that I can find you later without crushing you.”  Wind buffeted me while she whipped her head side to side, nearly brushing me out of her palm with one of her braids like it were a tremendous broom.  “Aha, perfect!” she exclaimed, causing me to cover my ears as my vision blurred from the pounding.  “Would you like to hop into bed with two beautiful giantesses?”  I didn’t waste my voice answering.  Even if she cared that I did, she had never been able to hear my voice when I was this small.  “Of course you would!  It’s got to be some sort of dream of yours, right?”

Gina didn’t even have to take a step to reach her bed, and it felt as though I was falling while she sat on it.  My plummet continued while she lowered me the considerable length of her body, a titanic white pillar covered with a tight black shirt that accentuated her curves, until I reached the mattress.  The turned her hand sideways to unceremoniously dump me out, and I slid along the length of her palm until landing on the light blue sheets with a bounce.  She withdrew her hand and pulled out her phone, keeping herself occupied until company arrived.

Several minutes later I heard the front door close, followed by the pounding of footsteps on the stairs.  Two knocks thundered from the door, drawing both of our attention.  Gina quickly slipped her phone back in her bag and shouted, “It’s open!” and I clutched my ears again.  The doorknob turned, then the massive panel swung inward, revealing a dark figure on the other side with the most of her head blocked by the door frame.  She stooped forward and entered with a thundering step, and I took the opportunity to look her over.

Judging by her silhouette and how she bent over, Kristie was a few inches over seven feet, with flowing brown hair that reached the middle of her chest.  Her radiant brown eyes lit up while she scanned the room, her full lips pursed as she did so.  She wore a dark blue shirt for her school’s basketball team that was at least one size too small, exposing the bottom of her midriff, and yoga pants that didn’t quite reach her ankles.  White ankle socks struggled to maintain their shape against her elongated feet while she twiddled her toes inside them.

“Hey, I don’t think I’ve ever been in here before!” Kristie declared after giving the room a quick scan.  Her voice had the same low, growling qualities as Gina’s, and sounded almost exactly the same.  Differentiating voices, I supposed, was a luxury reserved for people who not a fraction of a millimeter tall.  The colossus of a woman pointed toward the glass cage I lived in and asked, “What’s up with that?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Gina replied.  Her voice propagated through the foam sheet on top of the mattress, making my stomach feel abnormally upset.  “That’s just Jess’s from a few years ago.  She had a pet iguana that died, and we haven’t been able to get rid of its cage since.”  She didn’t seem totally convinced by Gina’s explanation, but also didn’t move close enough to see the score of shrunken people inside.  Gina patted her hand on the mattress with terrifying, repeated thuds that made me regret having bones.  To my dismay, her middle finger was pointing right at me.  “Come on, have a seat and let’s talk.”

Kristie apparently accepted the invitation and began walking towards me, huge feet pounding against the floor the whole way.  “Your room doesn’t look like I expected,” she said, closing in and becoming increasingly more mountainous as she did so.  In a few steps she was practically flush with the bed, towering several miles over me.  I had no illusions that she could see me at this size, and only hoped that the foam and her butt’s cushioning would be enough to keep me alive.

“Well, what did you expect?” Gina asked while the brunette titaness turned around.  Kristie began lowering herself onto the bed besides Gina, her hands creating a deep depression from which I could not escape.  Above me her butt continued to grow, quickly blocking anything else out.  Kristie’s yoga pants pulled tight around her ass, cupping each buttock closely and separating them like two half-moons.  From its sheer size I knew I could never escape, notwithstanding the steep incline I would have to overcome, and accepted that I would soon be trapped beneath her ass.

Sure enough Kristie sat down moments later, her humongous rear pressing me into the foam Gina had laid over her mattress.  I was immediately pinned between Kristie’s buttock and the soft material beneath, trapped under what must be billions of pounds of woman.  Pressure from her weight built up acutely, and while I was strained beneath it I didn’t feel as though I were in imminent danger of being crushed.  There was even enough to breathe for now, though the force of her ass kept me from sucking in too deeply.

“Guess I expected the doorway to be higher,” she said, and the vibrations enveloping me from her butt created a sense of euphoria I hadn’t felt for years.  Her laugh afterwards didn’t help things, and I felt my dick twitching with each rumbling tremor from her laughter.  Kristie pressed herself further into the bed, causing me to grimace with pain, but somehow I only got harder.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” Gina asked.  To my surprise I was thankful for a tremendous ass to be smushing me down, since her voice didn’t seem nearly as apocalyptic beneath Kristie.  Besides that, without feeling the vibrations too strongly from her voice I would be able to easily tell the two giantesses apart.

“I figured you’d be one of the few girls who could understand.”  My cock twitched with each syllable, and by the time she was done I had become fully erect.  “My growth spurt was really sudden, and no one saw it coming.  Even the doctors were surprised, everything told them my growth plates were closed, and then I shot up two feet overnight.”  Never before had I wanted someone to stop talking more than now, so that my arousal might have a chance to dissipate.  “I’m just wondering how you deal with being so tall.”

“What do you mean by that?” Gina asked.  Incredible.  She was giving the least amount of input so that Kristie would have to keep talking.  Did she know what this was doing to me?  “I just am tall, so I’m really not sure what you mean by dealing with it.”

“It’s just weird, you know?”  Reflexively I thrusted against Kristie’s buttock, hoping to relieve some of the pressure building up.  “Neither of my parents are tall, and all my siblings are fairly short.  I had accepted that I’d be short, it just seemed natural.  Then I shot up so much after wanting to try out for basketball as a joke, and now I tower over my entire family.  I think my dad’s even scared of me.”  I thrusted against her ass a few more times, hoping to manage the pent-up arousal from her speaking.

“Hey, I’m the tallest in my family too!”  Gina conveniently omitted that she got a sizable boost from sorcery, and probably wanted to avoid mentioning the issue entirely so she wouldn’t have to explain how she manipulated Kristie’s body for her own ends.  “I’m over three feet taller than my older sister, weird stuff happens sometimes.  But if they can’t accept you for who you are, are they really your family?”

“The family stuff was really just a lead in.”  No matter how much I tried I couldn’t get enough leverage to thrust any harder, and started to get upset not only at the ass pinning me beneath it, but at the fact that I couldn’t’ satisfy my desires.  “See, I used to have a lot of guys interested in me, but now I’m taller than all of them and they don’t want to talk to me anymore, so I’m not even sure how I’ll get a boyfriend now.” 

The stifling pressure from Kristie’s butt released, and I took a deep breath.  I barely even saw the stark white surface pressing toward me at immense speeds, threatening to overtake me.  Her foot collided with me, driving me back so hard I was formed against the firm, curved surface of her big toe.  When her foot finally stopped I was almost entirely out from under her ass, and could see hints of her back stretching for hundreds of stories.

“I’ll go ahead and tell you a secret.”  Out from under Kristie’s butt, Gina’s voice had regained all of its power and menace.  “I’ve had a boyfriend for years, and he’s a lot shorter than me.”  Wait, was she talking about me?  I almost wanted to cum on Kristie just to spite Gina now.  “I met him when my sister was tutoring someone from another school.  Really, I suggest just finding the shortest guy you can and asking him out, he’ll be too surprised to say no and he’ll do whatever you want.”

“Are you sure that’ll work?”  I stopped being interested in their conversation while I climbed the sturdy weave of Kristie’s sock.  Years of practice had made me adept at climbing, and despite my significant size disadvantage I was at the edge of her big toe before long.  I grabbed onto her pants and began humping against her magnificent ass, hoping to finish before she shifted again.  “It seems like he’d just be scared of me and say no.”

“Yeah, might be scared of you.  Maybe even terrified!”  I felt that Gina was advising someone else to follow her path, but I was too involved with Kristie’s rear to give it a second thought.  “The point is, he’s probably into you anyway and won’t say no.”  By now I was nearing completion despite how hard Gina was pushing her to be a sociopath, and continued to pump away at the firm buttock I was clinging to.

“Well, if it worked for you I’ll give it a shot.”  Coincidentally, right when she finished is when I shot my load.  I felt bad immediately after, and knew that the only thing I had ruined was my underwear, but it was a small price to pay to spite Gina.  The great white floor beneath me disappeared, and suddenly I was left clinging to Kristie’s yoga pants while I finished cumming.  She tilted backwards, and pressed me into the mattress with significantly more force than she had before.  I continued spurting while she asked, “What should I do with him, though?  I’m worried that he might seem self-conscious to go out in public.”

“I didn’t want to spill it just yet, but I’m having a party Friday night,” Gina said.  Trying to push Kristie’s enormous ass off me would have been futile, and I was too spent anyway.  Her butt drove me further into the foam the more she relaxed, and I began to feel more of her weight pressing down on me.  “You’re invited, of course, but don’t spread it around.  If you tell him that he can come to an exclusive party, he’ll definitely be in the palm of your hand.”

“I guess I’ll give it a shot.”  Despite how great her butt was, the only thing I wanted now was for Kristie to get hers off me.  “You’re fine with anyone I invite over, right?”  I couldn’t even struggle beneath her rear, there was too much force from her leaning back.

“If you bring him, he’ll be more than welcome.”  I couldn’t shake the feeling that Gina was just trying to get more captives for her terrarium, or even that she was up to something more sinister.  “Why don’t you head home and think this over, and ask him out at school tomorrow?  It’s a day’s notice, he should be able to come.”

“Yeah, I’ll see how it goes.  If I show up with a man on Friday, you’ll know it went well!”  Kristie stood, and to my surprise I was lifted up with her – I must have gotten stuck to her spandex while she sat on me.  She took a step toward the door, her buttock pushing hard against me, before Gina called for her to wait.

“You’ve got something stuck to your butt,” she said, and Kristie instantly stopped.  Gina’s titanic fingers brushed down her ass, pressing into the firm flesh as they went, until I was caught amidst the whorls of her fingerprint.  With a flick she sent me flying down into her palm, where I came to a stop almost exactly in the middle.  “Okay, got it.  Seeya tomorrow!”  I watched Kristen leave, each shift and jiggle of her butt projected by her yoga pants, and almost sighed as she closed the door.

“I don’t like that you’ve shrank to this size,” Gina announced once she was sure Kristie was out of earshot.  “For your benefit I’ll make you back to the size I’m used to, but I want to make it clear it’s not the size you should be, got it?”  With that I expanded rapidly and everything returned to normal, or at least as normal as it can be for someone an inch tall.

Unlike most times, Gina did not promptly return me to the terrarium after her shrinking game.  “Sorry, but my latest addition brought you guys over capacity.  If I don’t thin you out, you’ll starve!  So, I need to get rid of some of the chaff, and that might include you.”  I no longer felt sad when she announced this, but strong regret instead.  No one would come out of this satisfied except for Gina, and for some reason the rest of the shrinkees would want me to explain it to them if I survived.

In only two gliding strides Gina crossed the room to stand beside her desk – or, as she referred to it, the playground.  The desk’s surface didn’t even come up to her knees.  From her explanation, she liked to interact with normal-sized objects since it made her feel exceptionally gigantic.  My take on it was that she simply did not want to go through the hassle of building another desk when this one served her purposes just fine.

I descended with such speed it was as though the floor had fallen out from under me, and I even let out a brief scream in the apparent freefall.  Gina kept her hand beneath me the whole time though, and slowly brought it to rest on the wood finish.  Then she tipped her hand sideways and dumped me onto the empty expanse.  She stood back up and leaned forward so that she could loom over me, then extended a single gigantic finger toward me and shook it emphatically.  “You stay put now, okay?” she commanded.  “Otherwise you’ll incur your Goddess’s wrath.”  Luckily she didn’t see me roll my eyes.  Where could I even go?

Gina’s stockinged feet thudded against the floor until she pressed herself up against the terrarium’s glass wall.  She flicked open the roof’s panel and stared down at the assembled captives milling about.  “Your Goddess demands tribute!” she bellowed, loud enough that even I felt my knees go weak.  “You have five seconds to provide Me with five blood sacrifices.  If you don’t I will crush every single one of you pathetic worms.  Now!”  Gina could be quite persuasive when she wanted to be.

I doubted it took half as long for that many people to be separated out, and Gina plunged her hand into the tank.  She withdrew it triumphantly a moment later, holding the group clenched in her fist.  Gina was beaming while she walked back to me, probably elated at the slaughter that was about to ensue.  Her thundering steps stopped when she was looming over the desk again, then she knelt and sat back on her heels.  For a moment she let her clenched fist hover above, then flung her fingers open to deposit the sacrifices beside me.

Feeling sorry for them, I went around and helped them get back to their feet: some of them had never been carried before, let alone dropped like that.  As I had expected it was a bunch of nobodies, new arrivals whose faces I barely recognized, until I got to the last one.  “What the hell are you doing out here, Will?” I asked, helping the relative old-timer up.  “You know better than to be caught by her!”

“It was Roni!” he explained, eyes wide with panic.  “She kicked out my leg and threw me toward her!  Said it was either me or her, and it sure wouldn’t be her.  You gotta help me, she listens to you!  I don’t want to die like this!”  He was on the verge of tears, and clearly misremembering the last year of his life.

“You know I can’t do anything, man,” I explained.  “She’s never listened to me, and if she wants five bodies she’s going to get them.”  It sounded cold, but there was no sense lying to him.  If he was going to meet his fate at Gina’s hands, he needed to hear the harsh truth, not platitudes about how I’d do my best.  The kid deserved that much.

“Six,” Gina boomed.  We turned to face her, and she was gazing down at us with an enormous grin from her mountainous height.  “I see six tiny people in front of Me.  Maybe it’s time for Me to get a new High Priest, hmm?”  She reached forward and prodded me, shoving me back several feet.  “That senior girl looks pretty feisty, I think she might serve Me better.”  Roni was a senior when Gina shrank her over two years ago, could she be making a power play now?

“Gina, this isn’t funny,” I protested, backpedaling from her constantly ramming her finger into me.

“Who says I’m joking?” she asked, knocking me over with a forceful shove.  “All these years you’ve thought you were safe, just because you’re My ‘favorite.’  You’ve gotten complacent.”  She formed a wall with all the fingers on her right hand and began raising it.  “You’ve forgotten that you’re just a bug to Me like any other, and I can snuff you out just like that!”  Gina swung her hand down with impossible quickness, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

A crack split my ears, and a shockwave with enough force to make my eyes water washed over me.  I forced myself to look, and saw Gina’s gigantic hand pressed against the desk hard enough that her fingernails were bright white from the pressure.  She peeled her hand back, revealing spattered blood stuck to the bottom of her fingers.  Where her hand had been were the crushed remains of one of the girls Gina had brought back last month, completely flattened by the force of Gina’s swat.  If she had screamed, no one could have heard it over the impact of Gina’s hand.

I tried to remember what group she was a part of when Gina shrank her.  My gut said freshman and marching band, but for all I knew she was a cheerleading junior.  It hardly mattered now, though.  This sort of thing is why I never got too involved with newbies.

Gina began cackling, a horrifying rumble that rose from the pit of her stomach and chilled the joints of her audience.  “You tiny people crush so easily!” she exclaimed through uproarious laughter.  It took her several minutes to calm down from her homicidal glee, but she got right back to business.  “And who’s next?  Is it you?  Or you?”  She pointed at two of her captives on the edge of the desk who were so scared they were shaking.  “Actually, I think it’s you.”  Her finger pointed right at me, and I began scooting away.  It was pointless to try and escape, and her gigantic hand closed on me within seconds.

She paused the pursuit with her hand right above Will.  “Actually no, you’re closer,” Gina declared, and scooped him up with her fingers.  Will disappeared into her hand, and she rotated her wrist while pulling it away from the desk.  When it was about chest level for her she stopped and spread her fingers, revealing the tiny figure in her palm.  “Beg, pipsqueak,” she ordered.

Will didn’t even wait for her voice to stop rumbling before he was on his knees.  “Please, my Goddess, I’ve basked in your light for so long, I only want to do it longer!  Let me live, I’ll do anything you ask, anything!”

Gina feigned a yawn.  “Who are you again?  All you tinies look alike.”  Gina’s fingers began folding inward, and Will’s begging turned into incoherent babbling.  The fingers converged on him, and Gina’s expression turned manic.  Her victim screamed, and was quickly muffled by enormous fingers pressing down on him.  His bones cracked audibly, then Gina turned her hand back over and released him, dropping his mangled body onto the desk.

The others screamed while I looked on in shocked silence.  I had seen it coming the moment I saw him in the crowd, but I figured he would last longer.  Now the only person whose name I even knew was Roni, and from the sound of it she was trying to get Gina to kill me.  The terrarium was about to get a lot lonelier for me.

“You!” Gina snapped, breaking me out of my contemplation.  She was pointing at one of the guys near the edge, and he had become frozen with terror.  “You look particularly small, I bet I’ll only need two fingers to crush you.”  Without giving him time to run she plucked him up with her thumb and forefinger, his scream trailing off while she raised him to her face.  Gina’s fingers tensed, and cries of agony reached us.  Suddenly the tiny body collapsed and Gina’s digits came together, handily extinguishing him.  With a grin Gina wiped her fingers on her thigh, then picked out her next victim.

“And you look even smaller than he did,” Gina purred, extending a thumb from her blood-streaked hand.  “I shouldn’t need anything more than this.”  The thumb was easily four times the size of her target and twice as wide.  When her shadow fell over the girl she had selected, the panicking, condemned victim shrieked and began kicking at the desk’s surface.  She didn’t get far before Gina’s thumb pinned her down, though.  With a sickening crunch her body gave way, and Gina began twisting her thumb back and forth, grinding her into paste.

The only remaining shrunken person lost his nerve and took off running for the edge.  He leapt from the plateau, waving his arms wildly while he plummeted toward the ground.  Unfortunately, he had misjudged the length of Gina’s legs and landed on her thigh, just above her knee.  She looked down with a smirk and said, “You’re making this too easy.”  Immediately her fingers seized the desperate escapee, swiping him up and bringing him up to her face.

“Hm.  You’re bigger than the others,” Gina declared.  I hadn’t noticed a significant size difference between any of us: she targeted shorter people in general these days, and there were fractions of an inch difference between all of us.  “Too big, actually.  You could stand to be a lot smaller.”  He didn’t scream, probably not even realizing what was happening while he diminished in size.  In just seconds he had disappeared from view completely, not even a speck left to blemish Gina’s palm.

Gina’s hungry blue eyes fell on me.  With no one else left to distract her, she was free to do whatever she wanted with me.  “Looks like it’s just you left, My favorite pet,” she cooed, placing a titanic hand next to me.  I wished she would settle on a single term for me.  Probably she thought this kept me on my toes, while really it was just confusing.  “No other little bugs for you to hide behind.  You were always the smallest, did you ever notice that?”  Though I had never thought about it before, I realized that I had been looking up at everyone non-stop the last several years.  Even the one Gina had crushed under her thumb had me at eye to chin.  With a smirk she asked, “Why are you so smalllllll?”

She hadn’t asked me this question in years, but even with her voice a low rumble and amplified far beyond normal human capacity she still found a way to make it obnoxious.  I hadn’t even thought about it since Fulda handed me off to her like a book she had become bored with.  With how intently Gina was watching me though, I figured I should come up with something.  “Well, as my Goddess you made me small,” I began, looking to stroke her ego, “so there must be a reason.  You made me small so that I could best serve you.”

“To serve Me, huh?” she repeated, sliding her fingers around me.  “That’s an interesting choice of words.  You’re close, but not quite on the money.”  Her thumb and forefinger pinched around my chest, covering me from head to toe with some to spare.  She lifted me from the table, raising me until I was around chest height.  “The reason you’re so small, so significantly insignificant, is to be served to Me.  Observe!”

Gina opened her mouth, revealing rows of perfect white teeth behind her pink lips.  She cocked her hand back, and in a split second she catapulted it forward, launching me from between her fingers.  I tumbled head over foot, her face looming larger with each rotation.  It became clear that I was on a direct course for her cavernous mouth with nothing to stop my flight.

I sailed between Gina’s lips and slammed hard onto the familiar pink beast of her tongue.  She slammed her jaw closed, sealing me into the wet, lightless cave and throwing me against her palate.  Her tongue rushed up and collided with me, then the soft tentacle flattened out to engulf me.  In a matter of seconds I was drenched in saliva and pinned between her tongue and the ridged roof of her mouth.

This was far from the first time Gina had tossed me in her mouth, and I didn’t intend for it to be the last.  After the first few dozen trips behind her lips I had built up a resistance to the burning from her saliva, and a few score battles later I had learned how to effectively fight her tongue.  I seized one of the ridges of her palate, and with a solid pull slid out from between her tongue and the firm tissue above.

I landed ankle-deep in her frenulum, still on the inside of her wall of teeth, and tried to get my bearings.  Gina’s tongue shot forward, hitting me in the chest and throwing me over her molars.  It drove me into the soft, slimy tissue inside her cheek, where she held me far enough in I could hardly breathe.  Expecting this, I reached back and grabbed the tip, then spun myself around and latched onto the massive pink beast.  Before she could pull it back I grabbed my forearms with the opposite hand, constricting her tongue and firmly attaching myself to it.

The enormous beast withdrew behind Gina’s teeth, scraping me off during its retreat.  Her jaw dropped, opening a gap between her teeth, and with a sharp tilt of her head I tumbled into it.  I managed to grab onto a tooth as I fell past, just barely holding on to the slick enamel of a canine.  Gina’s tongue descended on me almost immediately, slapping across my whole body hard enough that I lost my grip and got driven into the delicate tissue of her frenulum.

Gina reared her tongue back and slammed it onto me again, pressing me further into the padding around the base of her mouth.  She gave me a moment of reprieve then went on the offensive again, jabbing at me repeatedly with the tip.  I tried to shield my face only to find it bulged around my hands, threatening to overtake my whole body.  When it was poised to pin me I clamped my arms around it again, constricting the monster that was trying to assert its dominance over me.

The tongue reared up, slamming me into the roof of Gina’s mouth.  I kept my hold strong however, and weathered the beatings from the mighty tentacle.  Gina thrashed it around, trying to throw me off, but I squeezed tighter to keep from sliding.  Finally, she ran me along her palate as though it were a washboard, but found herself unable to dislodge me from my ostensibly precarious position.

Gina parted her lips, flooding the damp cavern with light once more, then stuck her tongue out.  When I was past the soft, pink pillows that acted as a gateway for her mouth she raised a hand up toward me.  She firmly seized me with her thumb and forefinger yet again, then slid me off the beast I had ridden to freedom.  Her eyes fell on me, no longer with the hungry gleam they had before.  Now they were expressing something different, something I had never seen from her until now.

“My, you’re tenacious,” Gina declared, lifting the collar of her shirt to dry me off.  “I burned more calories trying to eat you than I would have gained from it… not that that’s too difficult, mind.”  She gave a quick, snorting laugh, and continued to dab the saliva off me.  “But I’ve decided to keep you around as My High Priest a bit longer.  Congratulations!”  She still had that look in her eye, and Gina expressing an unfamiliar emotion toward me caused some serious consternation.

She stood, keeping me roughly level with her chin during the meteoric rise.  By now I was used to sharp changes in elevation like this, and easily dealt with the discomfort inside me.  With her elegant gait, Gina crossed the room in only a few steps, carrying me back to the glass cage that had become my home.  The giantess plunged her hand through the open roof, depositing me in a circle of my fellow inmates.

The soft pounding of Gina’s mammoth feet held our attention momentarily while she walked back to her desk.  She pulled out a black leather-bound book with sheets of paper jutting out from between the pages, then returned to her bed, the only place to sit that fit her anymore.  Silently she cracked open the grimoire to one of the marked spots and began reading, moving her lips along with the words.  I had gotten a decent amount of practice lipreading from when Gina would shrink me to what she called me “true” size, but nothing she was mouthing resembled English, or even any language like it.

Whatever tricks Gina was up to, I was sure to find out later.  For now, my main concern was finding Roni.

Once it was clear that Gina wasn’t using me as a trick, the small crowd of shrunken students closed in around me.  They gasped as though they were in awe of me, like I had somehow convinced their goddess to spare my life.  I knew as well as she did that it was a game to her, and if she wanted to, she could have smashed me without a thought.  For the dozen or so people showering me with adoration, though, I had performed the impossible.  Most of them had never even seen one of Gina’s cullings.

“You’re back!” “How’d you do it?”  “Take me with you next time!” they called, pressing closer until I felt like I was being pressed by Gina’s fist again.  All I wanted to do was get out of the spotlight and talk to Roni so I could get to the truth of the matter.  My adoring fans, however, had no intention of letting me go, and their praises all blended together in a cacophony of sound.

Nervously I ducked down, trying to escape the throng of inmates trying to get some sort of blessing from me.  Ironically, I found myself wishing that Gina would shrink me right then.  Make me truly tiny, nothing more than a speck, so that I could get away from them, or escape their notice entirely.  One of them would crush me, no doubt, but at least it would deny their goddess the satisfaction of doing it herself.

Beneath the armpit of one of my fans I saw a woman sitting dejected on a small piece of gravel.  She had her knees pulled up to her chest and sat silently, paying no attention to the thronging mob only a few feet away.  That was the mark of someone who had been in the terrarium a while and understood that there was nothing special about Gina bringing me back.  In fact, she did look familiar – there was something about her green eyes that stuck in my memory.  I slid out from the crowd and approached her before they noticed I was missing.

“Hey,” I said simply.  “What’s the matter?”

“She took her,” she answered, her voice quivering.  “She took my little sister and didn’t bring her back.  She’s dead, isn’t she?”  I gave a solemn nod, and she pressed her face into her knees.  A wail escaped her mouth, and I took a step closer.  Carefully I placed a hand on her shoulder to comfort her.  She continued sobbing, as I expected: my sympathy could never bring back one of Gina’s victims, no matter how much I wanted it to.

“She was just a kid,” the woman continued through tears, “barely even 14 when we wound up here.”  I knelt beside her and took one of her hands, hoping she would open up.  “We had just moved here and didn’t know anyone, it was only the second day of school.  I went to get her so I could take her home and saw this gigantic bitch looming over her, mocking her for being short.  So I stepped in and told her to pick on someone her own size.  She laughed and turned to me, and I realized that I only came up to her waist.  Told me to dream on and asked if I was crazy, said that my sister was so much bigger than me she should be the one stepping in.

“That’s when I started shrinking.  I didn’t come up to her waist, but her knees.  Then her ankles.  Her heels.  Then the soles of her shoes.  My sister screamed – she was enormous, too, like I had never imagined.  It was terrifying.  That must have gotten Gina’s attention though.  Her scream vanished, and she wasn’t towering over me anymore.  I looked and saw her in front of Gina’s other foot, even smaller than me, still screaming.  She picked us up and put us in her bag, smiling the whole time.  Then we were here.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I offered, knowing my words were hollow.  “I can relate… kind of.  One of my oldest friends was out there, too.  I had to hear him beg while she squeezed the life out of him.  It never gets easier to watch, to hear her go on her rampages.”

She lifted her head and sniffed.  Her eyes were puffy from crying, and streaks ran down her cheeks.  Quickly she wiped her face with a hand, then asked, “She’s going to kill all of us eventually, isn’t she?”

“Not if I can help it.”  I hoped my false bravado helped her at all, because it didn’t help me.  “I don’t think we’ve been acquainted, I’m-“

“Gina’s high priest, yeah,” she broke in.  “Or her favorite pet, I guess.  I’m Vanessa.”  I smiled weakly, and she tried to return it, though neither of us were convincing.

Figuring this impromptu therapy session was over I stood, taking Vanessa’s hand with me.  “C’mon, let’s get you inside.”  I gave her hand a tug, and she quickly unfolded to stand as well.  When she was at her full height I looked dead on at the collar of her tattered shirt.  Her brown hair waved forward and back, brushing against my forehead before it came to a rest.

“I figured someone so important would be taller,” Vanessa remarked, looking down at me.  If she was joking either I’d helped her more than I thought, or she had developed some very unhealthy coping mechanisms in the past few months.

“Some women like short guys,” I replied, walking past her toward the ramshackle house Fulda had given Gina to keep me in.  The crunch of sneakers on gravel told me that Vanessa was following me.  I wasn’t eager to have Will’s room filled so soon after Gina popped him like a grape, but there was no point in leaving it vacant.  Besides, if Vanessa had to be out there with the people who worshipped Gina I expected there would be trouble.

We stepped over the stripped chicken bone that lay across the doorframe, the body trapped under it nothing more than a skeleton.  This was the remnant of one of Gina’s early attempts to feed us.  She had dropped a drumstick from the top of the cage, giggling as she did so.  It landed directly on someone – I forgot his name long ago – and crushed his skull, killing him instantly.  While we screamed Gina laughed hysterically, finding it hilarious that she had accidentally crushed one of her captives.

The model house Fulda had kept me in was a mess.  Its door had long ago been knocked off its hinges when Gina flicked it in a rage, and all of the windows had circular holes in them the width of her finger.  She had torn the roof off so many times that it no longer fit properly, which made her even more eager to do it.  Its interior was far from pristine, too.  All the furniture had tears or missing legs, and we had stopped trying to put things back where they were when it became clear Gina took sadistic glee in shaking it with us inside.

Finding Roni was easy enough – she was sitting in the middle of the living room, stuffing bursting out of the leather chair she was in with her long legs propped up on a crate, one ankle crossed over the other.  Roni was one of the few women I suspected Gina shrank because she was jealous.  An all-state cross-country runner, she had lean, defined muscles, with the little amount of body fat she had gathering in all the right places, and two years of surviving Gina’s torment had only made her more toned.  Her waist-length blond hair was tied into three braids, which were themselves braided to run the length of her back.  Sparkling blue eyes complemented her light skin while they scanned the pages of a book she had no doubt read a half-dozen times before.

Roni didn’t even acknowledge us when we entered.  I cleared my throat loudly.  No response.  “Will’s dead,” I announced, and she replied by loudly turning a page.  “You remember Will, right?  Nice kid, took himself too seriously, your old friend?”

“I stopped having a friend named Will about half an hour ago,” Roni said, not even looking up from the page.  That was… startlingly nihilistic, even for her.  She had always been blunt, but this was a new level.

“Yeah.  Because Gina crushed him.”  She might have shrugged, but it was so slight it barely registered.  This was getting nowhere.  “Before she did, he told me that you threw him into the group to save yourself.”

“Did he now?”  Roni laconically placed a scrap of paper to mark her spot, then slammed the worn book shut.  She set her legs on the floor and placed the book on the crate, then stood.  Her joints popped while she stretched, nearly touching the ceiling.  “What else did he say?” 

“Nothing much.  Begged me to save him, begged Gina not to kill him.”  Roni stared at me blankly, and Vanessa had moved off to the side.  At times like this I’d rather be pulling her teeth than trying to get information out of Roni.

“Sounds like him.  Kid was a fucking weasel.”  Roni took a couple languid steps toward me, her battered running shoes pounding on the imitation wood.  “He left something out.”  She came to a stop about a foot away so she could look down at me while I had to crane my neck back.  Roni was a bit over a head taller than me, and had gotten acclimated to using it for her advantage – not that she was intimidating compared to Gina.  “Will tried to push me into Gina’s hand, so I threw him at her.  Not gonna say I’m glad he’s dead, but he had it coming.”

“No, that doesn’t…”  I wanted to deny it, but when I thought about it for a few seconds it absolutely made sense.  Will had made it so long by being a coward, plain and simple.  Roni might be cold, but I didn’t figure her for a cold-blooded killer.  Gina may have dropped her name earlier, but that was hardly evidence: she loved tormenting us emotionally almost as much as physically.  “Well, better him than you, then.”  She smirked, glad that I came around to her point of view.

Roni looked up from me, finally acknowledging that Vanessa existed.  “Who’s this?” she asked.

“That’s Vanessa,” I replied.  “Her sister got taken in the last batch.  Figured that Will doesn’t need his room anymore, so she could have it.”

Roni tilted her chin back, the closest I’d ever come to see her greet someone.  “Cool, another V name.  I’m Veronica.”  Oh, that’s right.  We exchanged names so rarely here that I had forgotten her actual name.  “Been here long?”

“About four months,” Vanessa answered, taking a step toward us.  “She got us right when school started.  We had no idea why no one stopped her from bullying people, and it cost us- cost her life, and probably mine.  You?”

“Over two years.  Got me right at the end of my senior year.  I had a full-ride track scholarship until Gina ambushed me outside my car.  Bitch stole my future.”  She may have killed any outward expression of emotion, but I knew Roni was smoldering inside.  We stood silently until Roni turned her attention back to me.  “Go ahead.  You know you want to.”

“Six years.”  Vanessa gasped.  “I was dating Gina’s sister, and when I tried to break up with her she shrank me.  Then when she got bored of me, she gave me to Gina.  She’s the one who taught her how to shrink people, and who knows what other tricks she’s gotten from that book by now.”

“So you’ve been…”

“Tiny all that time, yeah.  I’m not sure if she’s keeping me alive out of some sentimental value, or she likes torturing the most, or loyalty to her sister.  Maybe it’s because she ‘stole’ me from her and she thinks this is spiting her.  Whatever the reason, even if it’s from old age I’m going to die shrunken.”

Before they could say anything else a shadow fell over the house, blocking the light streaming in through the windows.  I looked toward the obstruction and saw the crotch of Gina’s shorts blocking the whole view.  Just then a great crash pounded the tank’s roof and resonated throughout the walls.  “Feeding time, bugs!” Gina bellowed, her voice booming from the sky.  “Eat quick, lights out in five.  Some of you are having a very big day tomorrow.”  The latch slammed shut, followed by a great scratching sound that wormed its way into my head while she latched it.

The three of us walked to the door and saw a slice of bread the size of a helipad in the middle of our prison.  It was already being devoured by the other shrinkees, each of them shoving it into their mouth by the handful.  I didn’t see the need to rush, since there was always enough to last us several meals, and in some cases a couple days when Gina felt particularly generous.  We would be able to grab some in the morning without having to fight over it like the animals Gina was trying to turn us into.

Intense pounding heralded Gina’s return, and the others immediately abandoned their meal to look at her adoringly.  Some of them knelt and bowed while others offered prayers, and the new person hesitantly joined the group bowing.  I rolled my eyes while Roni glared at the giantess, and Vanessa froze, apparently unsure what to do since we weren’t joining in.

I looked up at Gina, the living skyscraper who surveyed everything before her.  After all this time I still didn’t know what to feel while gazing at her.  Puny, sure, but that had been with me my whole life.  There was no denying that she was beautiful, but she was also responsible for all my suffering the past several years, as well as hundreds of murders.  No doubt Stockholm Syndrome played a significant part in my conflicted feelings.

Gina’s blue eyes fell on me, and I couldn’t bring myself to look away.  We stared at each other for several seconds until she winked, which for some reason made me feel deeply uneasy.  “Your Goddess has heard your prayers,” she said making the glass rattle, “and She is satisfied with the sacrifices today.  You will be at peace until She returns tomorrow.”  With that she flicked the light switch, casting the entire room into darkness.  Her thudding steps made the terrarium shake until she crawled into bed, finally freeing us of her menace until tomorrow.

Roni, Vanessa, and I walked back into the house, where some lights still shone dimly.  Wordlessly Roni went to her room, bumping into me as she went past, and I showed Vanessa to Will’s old room.  Even if it wasn’t to her tastes, I figured, it would beat sleeping on the rocks outside.  Once they were situated I crawled into bed myself, turned off the weak light, and let my exhausted body drift to sleep.

Gina woke up on her phone’s third alarm and stretched, the ends of her magnificent legs hanging over the foot of the bed.  The last time her mom had been home she had gotten Gina a custom bed built for someone as immensely tall as her, but that had been almost a year ago.  Since then Gina had grown at least a foot, and needed another extension.  At this rate, by the time she graduated her bed would span the entire broad wall of her bedroom.  Despite the logistical difficulties, Gina couldn’t imagine a height she could reach that would be “too tall.”

She swung her legs to the side and slapped her tremendous feet onto the carpet, an impact that was sure to wake up the lighter sleepers in her colony of shrunken people.  In only two gliding steps she was at the light switch, and with a flick the room was flooded with soft, white light.  Some tiny shapes moved within the terrarium, roused by the sudden blast of light, and Gina grinned.  It was such a minor manifestation of the power she had over them, but probably did the most to explain why some of them had gone along with worshipping her.

Gina stripped off her pajama bottoms and T-shirt and tossed them in the hamper, then stepped sideways to her wardrobe.  Her slender fingers withdrew an outfit for the day: black shirt with sleeves to her elbows, black stockings, and black shorts that by now much have been permanently rolled so they barely covered any of her legs.  One of the casualties of her height was, by necessity, clothing options: buying clothes in her size wholesale was simply more practical than finding what she liked and growing it so it fit her.  The other students expected her to look a certain way, anyway, and she found this had a certain intimidation factor to it.

Once she was dressed Gina went to finish getting ready.  Having long outgrown it, she leaned forward against the chair for her make-up table to apply the minimal amount of foundation and eyeliner she used every day.  Without moving, she used the mirror to check her braids and make sure they were still more or less in order.  Satisfied with her appearance, Gina slipped on her worn pair of Mary Janes, grabbed her bag, and headed for the door.

At the threshold she paused, looking back at the terrarium containing her tribe of tiny people.  She wanted so badly to fuck with them a little like she did every morning, but she wanted to save their screams for later.  Then again, what could a little harassment hurt?  Gina slowly approached the glass and bent over so that she was looking through the side panel.  Tiny bodies scrambled to form a semi-circle in front of her while she stared at them in silence.  She gave two solid taps on the glass, making them clutch their heads, then pointed at a random one.  That ought to be enough to keep them talking all day, she told herself.  Feeling that they were sufficiently intimidated, she left and closed the door, leaving the light on as her gift to them. 

Gina slid out of her cramped car – there was simply not enough demand to engineer a car specifically for her – and strode toward the school as if it should be honored by her presence.  She ducked under the doorway and stood up, the ceiling just barely tall enough for her to not bang her head against it.  A small grin tugged at her lips while she looked over the students milling about in the hallway.  They were all so small: only a few of them even came up to her waist, and she liked watching them squirm while looking up at her.

“Hey Gina!” shouted a deep voice before she could have any fun.  She turned and saw Kristie barreling through the throng toward her, nearly a head over the next tallest person.  One particularly short girl was slow getting out of the way and got hip-checked on her shoulders, then sent sliding across the floor to Kristie’s complete ignorance.  When she was about arm’s length from Gina she continued, “Thanks for listening to me last night, it might seem silly to you but it really helped me out.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Gina replied, looking down at her chest-high friend.  “Have you had a chance to do anything about it yet?”

“Not yet, I just got here,” Kristie answered, casting her eyes askance.  “There’s someone I’ve had my eye on though…”

“What’cha talking about?” came a spunky voice from behind Gina.  The pair turned and saw Shelby leaning forward, just tall enough to reach the base of Gina’s shoulder.  Her green eyes sparkled, and shoulder-length red hair waved back and forth with her movements.  She was well-toned from her involvement in multiple sports and weightlifting, and wore loose t-shirts and baggy jeans to hide how developed her body had become.

Gina had been Shelby’s friend since they were in kindergarten, and for several years they had terrorized their classmates as by far the largest.  Around middle school though Gina had begun to widen the gap, and after her growth spurt looked down on her old friend just like everyone else.  She imagined her potential though, and one night gave her a boost much like she had Kristie.  Unlike her other friend, though, Shelby never had any complaints, and seemed to relish her physical domination over their peers almost as much as Gina.

“Oh, nothing,” Gina said coyly.  “Kristie here was just telling me about a boy she’s bringing to my party tomorrow.”

“Oh really?” Shelby interjected.  “Well, I wanna know too!  Tell me all about him!”

Kristie blushed.  This was more spotlight than she was used to, and she definitely hadn’t anticipated having to describe this guy before she even got to talk to him.  “He’s smart, funny, kinda built… I don’t think you have any classes with him though, and I doubt you’ve even noticed him.”

“Kristie was scared to ask him out because he’s so short!” Gina blurted, then she and Shelby burst into laughter while Kristie blushed even harder.

“Oh really!”  Shelby tried to compose herself, but couldn’t keep a straight face.  “Well, how small is this guy?  Go ahead and show us on Gina!”

“Come on, I really don’t-“

“No, go ahead!” Gina butt in, egging her friend on.  “Go ahead and point to where he’d come up to on me!  Really, we’re curious.”

Kristie muttered something under her breath about this being a mistake and jabbed her finger into Gina’s leg right where her shorts rolled up.  The other two stared at it, almost incredulous, and tried to imagine how someone like that would even look to them.

“Is his name Ken?” Shelby finally asked, and only got a quizzical look in return.  “Because he’s practically doll-sized.”  Her back arched with laughter and she nearly knocked over another student while Kristie somehow got redder until she turned the same shade as a strawberry.

Finally, Kristie exploded.  “And you’re one to talk?” she boomed.  “I know you, and didn’t you once say your ideal boyfriend would fit in your shoe?  That’s fucking weird, Shelby, that’s fucking-“

Gina shoved her arms between the two women and pulled them apart.  “Come on, we’re all friends here,” she calmly entreated, “there’s no need for us to fight.  Besides, you’re making a scene.”  Some of the nearby students’ fear of the trio had been overcome by their curiosity, and they were staring at them.  She fixed them with a glare until they went back to what they were doing, unwilling to face down the absurdly tall and temperamental woman.  “It’s about time for class, anyway.  We can talk about it at lunch, and hopefully Kristie will have something to tell us then.”  Shelby and Kristie accepted Gina’s mediation and backed off to either side of her.

The crowd parted in front of them as they walked through the hallway, giving the group a wide berth.  Gina grinned at them making way, accepting the path as a form of tribute to her.  She surveyed the crush of students desperate to get out of their way from her high vantage point.  Some of them nursed a years-old fear of either her or Shelby, remembering all too well how they played keep away with their belongings, or trapped them in corners and wouldn’t let them out.  Others simply knew that anyone who got in Gina’s way either had a very difficult time following or outright disappeared shortly after.  It was good to be feared.

Shelby veered off, then Kristie, ducking into their classrooms until it was just Gina.  She quickly found her classroom as well, and nearly had to double over to fit through it.  Past the threshold she still had to hunch over to keep her head from shooting through the flimsy ceiling.  All conversation suddenly died while the students focused on her, unsure if something they were saying might set her off.  Gina strode across the front of the room, her knees alone taller than the desks, until she reached her spot in the back, on the far side.

Gina sat down in the desk that felt like a toy to her.  Her legs hadn’t fit beneath it for the whole schoolyear, so she sat sideways and slid her feet up against the wall.  She didn’t much appreciate sitting in the back, but they hadn’t given her much choice: apparently, she was too much of a distraction up front, and students had difficulty seeing around her.  As far as she was concerned that was their problem, but at least it kept people from climbing over her legs every time they had to pass her.  One or two of the guys seemed to make more trips than the others then, too, like they got a kick out of her blocking their path.

It was almost impossible for Gina to focus.  Not only did she already know the material being taught, but she had such big plans for later that weighed on her mind.  She had everything ready for the ritual, and knew the incantations like the back of her hand.  While the teacher droned about stuff she had read in the textbook months ago she ran through it again, just to make sure.  The only thing she needed now was to choose which shrunken person would be appropriate to use.

The bell rang and not a moment too soon.  Gina shuffled out of the room, struggling to keep herself low enough to not bump her head, and just managed to fold herself up enough to fit through the door.  Once in the hallway, she took a moment to stretch, enjoying that she could be at her full height again, before turning toward her next class.

Not even two steps in Gina felt something bump into her crotch, and reflexively set her feet shoulder’s width apart and placed her hands on her hips, just above the rolled part of her shorts.  She looked down and saw a boy with a very perplexed face and book folded shut around his finger looking up at her.  “Are you fucking blind or something?” she growled down at him.  “How do you not see me?”

“Uh… uhm… uhhh…”

“Uh!  Uh!” Gina shouted, mocking him.  “Is that what you say when you run into somebody?”  He remained silent.  “Well?  What do you say?”  Her eyes scanned the hall.  Nobody was watching, as they had been conditioned not to over the years.

“I… well, I’m…” he continued to stammer, and Gina only got angrier.

“I think the words you’re looking for are, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I wasn’t paying attention, please excuse me.’”  This kid was halfway to her shoes already, she would barely have to do anything.

“Yeah th-that sounds right,” he managed, still unable to pull himself away from Gina.  It might have been how scared he was, but he thought he saw her grow a foot.

“I can’t let careless, rude people like you walk the halls though.  You’re going to think twice before you run into someone again, I promise.”  He flinched away, but Gina had no intention of hitting him.  Instead he rapidly reduced in size until he was about an inch tall, and stuck looking awe-struck at Gina towering over him.  She considered stepping on him while she walked over him, but decided this would be more fun.  With him loose in the hallway he was bound to get crushed by someone who had no idea he was there.

Fortunately for the rest of the student body the rest of the morning passed without incident, and Gina made it to lunch without having to turn her wrath on anyone else.  She staked out their usual spot and occupied two chairs – one for her butt, one for her legs – and got to work on her lunch.  Within minutes Kristie and Shelby had joined her, since it was pretty easy to pick her out of a crowd.

For a while they ate in silence, still tense from this morning.  Kristie spoke up between bites, “Hey Shelby.”

“Yeah?”

“I found the perfect boyfriend for you in the hallway just now.”  No way.  If she had found that kid from earlier it would be an amazing coincidence – and a miracle that he lasted longer than a minute.

“Word?  Where is he?”  Kristie dug into her breast pocket and squeezed her fingers around something.  Gina winced: this could bring up some questions she wasn’t quite ready to answer.  If this could only wait a day she would have the perfect setting for the reveal, and Shelby might even get her ideal boyfriend.

Kristie slapped her hand on the table, and when she pulled her fingers away yellow and white plastic stood out against the gray table.  Gina let out a sigh of relief: it was just a LEGO person, probably dropped by a freshman.  Her expression went unnoticed under Kristie’s laughter, and Shelby couldn’t keep from glowering at Kristie.

“Yeah, that’s real funny, Kris,” Shelby said, completely deadpan.  It looked like she wanted to leap across the table and strangle Kristie, but had a longer game in mind.  “You talked to that tiny guy you want to date or are you still too scared of him?”

“Actually, I did!” Kristie began, sounding extremely self-satisfied.  “We had a really nice chat, and…”

Gina wanted to keep listening so that she would be up on the gossip with her friends, but her ears were burning.  Two tables over, she had heard her name, and turned to focus on that.  “I don’t know why everyone says Gina’s so great at basketball,” the careless man said.  “She’s got no skill or fundamentals, they just pass it to her and she’s so tall she drops it in the hoop.  I’m not even sure it’s legal to let freaks like her play.”  That was enough for Gina to make up her mind, but then he continued, “I’d still smash, though.”  And like that, Gina had a target.

The rest of the day Gina struggled through class, and between periods walked the halls to find where he’d be at the end of the day.  Finally, just before the last class she spotted him pulling a book out of his locker.  This would be the best bet, she knew, and this her presence alone ought to be enough to get him alone.  Just one more agonizing hour and she would have the ideal trigger for her ritual tonight.

After what seemed like an eternity the time came, and Gina made a beeline for the guy.  Students were standing around their lockers chatting, putting their things away until tomorrow, but when they saw Gina moving with a purpose they quickly concluded their business and left.  She crept up behind him, doing her best to stay quiet with her enormous feet.  While she loomed over the oblivious student she placed her hand on the locker door, waiting for an opportune moment to announce her presence and scare the shit out of him.

Finally, he leaned back far enough that she wouldn’t clip his head and slammed the door shut.  “Hey,” Gina boomed.  He spun around in surprise and looked up at the wall of a woman trapping him against the locker.  The top of his head just crested her shorts: not a short man compared to anyone else, but she had a way to make even the biggest men feel small.  “You got some shit to say, you should say it to my face.”

“I would, but it’s way up there,” he retorted.  “Let me climb you though and I’ll say all sorts of things.”

“Big words,” Gina replied.  “Too bad they’re coming from such a small man trying to hide how scared he is of a girl.”

“Yeah, it’s too bad I’m not a freakishly tall mutant like you, huh?  Get out of my way, I’ve got stuff to do.”  He walked forward and collided with Gina’s crotch, but didn’t even budge her.

“If you think I’m tall now, you’re in for a big surprise,” Gina said with a smirk.  Before the snarl left his face, he was half his size, just barely up to Gina’s knees.  His first scream came when he was passing her ankles, and was little more than a squeak by the time it stopped.  He looked up at the monumental woman in front of him, now hundreds of feet tall, and saw her malicious grin.  Understanding her threat, he began to run.

Gina watched his futile escape attempt with amusement.  No matter how fast his tiny legs could go there’s no way he would be able to outrun her.  She let him pass the curve of her shoe far enough that his vision would be free of her then took a small step, letting him run into the shiny black leather of her shoe.  He spun around, trying to get around the other side, but Gina simply placed her other shoe in his path again.  Her heels clicked together, and after a bit of sliding she had completely trapped him in a small triangle between her shoes and the locker.

“FYI, normally I’d crush you right now,” Gina boomed, making her victim freeze out of shock.  “I have other plans for you though, so you get to live a little longer.”  She squatted until her knees banged against the lockers, and the tiny man at her feet scrambled for an escape.  He was unable to climb over her shoes, however, and Gina’s fingertips easily plucked him up.

Gina stood and unzipped her purse.  While the shrunken man struggled in her grip she unzipped the bag, then with a flick of her wrist tossed him in.  She zipped it back up, plunging him into complete darkness, and left to drive home.

I heard and felt Gina approach, and the floor struggling under her tremendous frame gave us ample time to be ready for her arrival.  She liked for her flock to be out in the open and ready to greet her when she walked in, and after yesterday she might fly into a rage and start smashing people indiscriminately if she couldn’t find me.  While her feet were still pounding on the stairs I rushed out of bed and grabbed Roni and Vanessa before heading out into the open field.

Gina’s other victims were already scrambling to get into columns, and I took my place front and center.  The latecomers filled the last remaining spots, with Roni standing directly behind me, and we all eagerly watched the door.  When the resounding steps from going up stairs became subtle crashes on the floor we knew there were only a few seconds left until Gina burst in.

The knob turned, and with an ear-splitting crash the door flew inward.  Gina bounded after it, practically skipping across the threshold, and kicked off her shoes so that they crashed into the bed.  My fellow inmates cheered for her, a gesture that she had never acknowledged before and I doubted she ever would, while she approached the terrarium.  She pressed her body against the glass, flattening her thighs and stomach, and set her hands atop the roof while she beamed down at us.  Her eyes looked manic, like she was in the middle of a rampage, and her mouth was spread in a permanent toothy grin.

“Ah, obedience, that’s what your Goddess likes to see!” she declared.  “But it has come to My attention that for some of you, faith in Me is wavering.  I have scarcely engaged with My worshippers, leading to an insolent high priest and open mutiny against My power.  But that ends today!”  Her booming voice rattled the walls around us, and with a single flick of her finger the freed the latch for a door on the roof.  “Will My high priest please step forward so that I can correct this streak of insubordination?”

Well, this was it.  After six years of tormenting me, Gina had finally decided to end it.  I stepped forward to separate myself out so no one else would get caught as collateral damage, either when she snatched me up or smashed me on the spot.  After years of ostensibly leading them, the least I could do was not take them with me when I went down.

There was a flash of white and a body-rocking impact, and next thing I knew I had been snatched up by Gina’s fist.  My stomach lurched when she yanked me out, nearly forcing my insides to rocket out of my body.  The abrupt stop had the same effect in the opposite direction, and for the first time in years I felt nauseated from being handled by Gina.

Her fingers opened, and I found myself staring up at her magnificent face.  “You have displeased Me, priest,” she began, her expression belying the threat of her words.  “For years you have tried to escape Me, failed to pay Me the proper respect, and led My worshippers astray.  Today I will rekindle their faith in two ways – first, I will show them what happens to insolent bugs like you, then I will show them a miracle.”

“My Goddess, please, let me repent!” I began.  Better late than never, I hoped.  “Put me back in with them, treat me like the common dirt I am, make me nothing more than a speck on Your divine cheek, just please don’t crush me!”

“I’m going to do all of those things and more,” Gina purred, reaching her free hand into her bag.  “And don’t think I wasn’t already going to – a Goddess does not need suggestions from the buzzing of worthless insects.”  She withdrew her hand, revealing a tiny stone disc with a star drawn on it and a shrunken person pinned between it and her forefinger.  The tiny person screamed, no doubt totally unaware of the gravity of his situation while Gina rotated the disc so that it was horizontal.

With a quick swoop Gina deposited me in the center of the disc, leaving me sprawled in the middle of the star, and snatched up the new prisoner with the same movement.  He continued screaming, but Gina’s booming voice drowned him out.  “Stay perfectly still,” she demanded, “and don’t make a sound.  You can beg Me for your life when this is finished.”  She maneuvered her fingers, and in no time the new prisoner had been consumed by her hand, his constant screams now squelched by her fingers.

Gina began chanting in a language I did not recognize with words that sounded like she was talking backwards.  The hand with the captive loomed over me, its fingers tightening the further into the ritual she went.  Electricity danced inside her blue irises, arcing through her pupils, and the volume of her chant increased simultaneously with the sound of bones cracking above.  Rivulets of blood dripped from her hand onto me, and the chanting became louder as it continued to pour.  My face and hair were drenched and still it came, covering my entire body.  Through the curtain of blood I saw strands of her hair stand and the star I was inside began to glow white.  Finally, at the chant’s climax, all of the blood suddenly vanished, and Gina looked ecstatic while her face loomed over me.

“It is done,” she declared, her voice even more menacing than usual.  “Now it is time for you to suffer my wrath, pipsqueak.”  She dumped the disc I had been standing on over, sending me sliding over the side.  I fell the entire length of her body, rushing past her waist and knees in less than a second, flailing my arms and legs in a desperate attempt to slow my descent.  The floor continued rushing up toward me however, and I expected to be dashed on the floor any second.

Instead of being splattered against the carpet, however, I survived the fall from hundreds of feet up.  It hurt, but since I had expected to be killed on impact it was rather a surprise.  Maybe the carpet really was soft enough that I’ve been worried about falling all this time for nothing?

Gina’s deep, booming laughter pulled me out of contemplation.  “I’ve been wanting to do this for years,” she said.  “Ever since you first came home with Fulda I wanted to step on you, stomp on you, grind you beneath My foot, and you’ve only made Me more pissed since then with your constant whining and useless fawning.”  She raised one stockinged foot into the air far enough that her knee touched her chest, letting her foot hover over me.  “Time for Me to blow off some steam.”

Her foot raced downward, and before I could so much as shield my face her heel slammed into me with millions of pounds of force.  Pain shot through my body and I felt myself being compressed beneath Gina’s tremendous weight, but even though I should have been smashed instantly I didn’t have so much as a broken bone.  My relief at that was tempered by the agony coursing through my tiny body, and Gina’s foot pinning me on the floor.

Gina lifted her heel, giving me a reprieve from the oppressive pressure I had been under.  I barely got in a breath before she brought it back down though, making pain explode through my body all over again.  She did this twice more, each one worse than the last, before letting her heel rest atop me.  It was far from a break, however, and she began to slowly grind her heel, causing a new kind of torment while she twisted me back and forth and drove me further into the carpet.

When her foot finally lifted I was stuck to the stocking, and the sheer violence of the movement caused me to see spots.  I came unstuck when she moved her foot back and went tumbling head over feet while her sole sped past above me.  Dizzy from the rotations, I landed on my back looking up at her.  Despite my blurred vision I could see that Gina was glowing from her excitement.

“Crushing you like the bug you are back then would have been a waste,” she said, her voice becoming more like a demonic roar.  “Now I can smash you over and over until you beg for mercy, and then stomp on you a few times more for fun.  The only downside is that I don’t get to feel your tiny, pathetic body crunch beneath My foot.” 

Fighting through the pain I managed to get up and stand unsteadily.  Before I could stagger away though her foot flew forward, caught me on the head with her passing big toe and knocked me prone again.  The ball of her foot slammed down atop me, and the misery of being smashed shocked my body again.  Gina raised her foot and brought it down on me again and again, pressing me harder into the floor each time.  Her foot’s rapid barrage left me dazed and writhing from the constant resumption of torment, and it was practically a relief when her foot finally came to a rest holding me still beneath its immense weight.

Slowly, however, Gina began to raise her heel, and I gritted my teeth while the pressure built.  By the time she was practically standing on her toes I was trying to scream, though nothing could get through my mouth full of skin and nylon.  She pressed her foot down harder, putting me beyond the point of even trying to scream.  When she began to deliberately rotate her foot back and forth it felt like she was shredding and pulverizing me simultaneously.

The constant torment made it impossible to tell how long she did it – it could have been a few seconds or ten minutes, it was all the same to me, and I wouldn’t put either past her.  When she finally stopped and raised her foot, though, I was firmly stuck to her stocking, practically embedded in the nylon.  Her foot continued its slow ascent until I felt it rotating to the side.  For the moment it looked like my torture at Gina’s feet was on hold, and I was thankful for the reprieve.

My break only lasted a second until Gina dug her finger beneath my chest, prying me away from her foot and pressing me into her waiting thumb.  She gave me a quick squeeze, causing me to double over as far as I could in her grip, and a resonating thud told me she had set her foot back on the floor.  With her suffocating hold she lifted me the rest of the way to her face, where her booming laughter joined the assault.

“You were stuck to My foot!” she exclaimed through laughs.  “Like a piece of old gum!  Disgusting, just like you are!”  She gave me another squeeze that would normally crack my bones, but instead only made me wish it had.  Gina worked me over, pinching every part of my body she could get between her fingertips, delighting in the squeal I made each time.  By the time she was done she held me by the ankle hard enough to sever my leg, dangling me upside down in front of her face while she watched with amusement.

“You know, I could call you My boy toy,” Gina said, batting me with a finger hard enough that I started swinging like a pendulum.  “Yeah, I like that.”  Another hard swat had me seeing stars.  “A tiny, otherwise useless thing that I play with to My heart’s content.”  A third swipe before I had even begun to slow down from the others.  “Someone who does whatever I say and loves Me unconditionally.  Someone in the palm of My hand.”  For emphasis, she dropped me into the palm of her other hand.  “What do you say, hm?  Are you My boy toy?”

I saw the tips of Gina’s fingers curl inward, and I knew what was coming next.  “Yes, sure, I’m your boy toy!” I desperately shouted.  “I’m your little plaything!”  Her fingers gradually came closer.

Gina’s blue eyes lit up.  “I knew you’d agree,” she purred while her fingers continued to encroach.  “You’ve always had a weird crush on Me, just like I have on you.”  One of her fingertips reached me, pressing me into her palm.  “Mine’s a bit more literal, though.”  The rest of her fingers caught up and began forming a fist, dragging me along with them.  “Besides, I’m your Goddess, right?”  Her face was blocked entirely by her fingers and I was plunged into darkness, the only sensation reaching me Gina’s echoing laughter through her hand.

Inside the iron grip of her palm was an agony even beyond that beneath her foot.  Her fist should have cracked my bones at the outset, but I was made to endure the titanic pressure each time she squeezed me.  Gina was completely unrelenting, pressing me between her fingers so hard I imagined I would be two-dimensional by the time she was done.  I could hear her own bones creaking under the pressure, as though she were so eager to crush me she would harm herself.

At last the pressure eased and her fingers opened.  The first thing I saw was Gina intently staring down at me with her mountain-sized face.  She looked even more relieved than I was after trying to squeeze the blood out of me, though likely for a different reason.  “Hey, now that you’re My toy I can play with you however I want,” she cooed, though the threat was obvious.  “You seem a little big for a toy though, don’t you agree?”  Oh no.  “Yeah, hold on one sec and I’ll fix that.”

Gina’s size exploded rapidly while I dwindled to a few fractions of a millimeter in her hand.  She ended up incomprehensibly large as always, looking more like a living mountain than a person.  While I stood in the canyon of her palm’s crease I considered whether her delusions of grandeur were really that delusional.  Certainly she had the power of a goddess and there seemed to be no end to her growth, both in what she’s capable of and her height, but she used it for sheer malice.

The mountain cliff of her lips split.  “This looks right, but you’re too small for Me to play with,” her voice rumbled, making my stomach flop just from her words.  “I was taught to share My toys though, and I know the perfect group to share you with.”  Her lips formed a miles-long grin, and she took a bounding step toward the terrarium.

“No Gina, don’t!” I protested.  “If you put me in there, they’ll kill me!”  My pleas fell on deaf ears, if it fell on any at all.  Her titanic hand was already sliding through the door in the roof, with me only sticking to her palm by virtue of her skin’s oils.

“Attention, loyal subjects!” she boomed, vibrations from her voice weakening the weak hold keeping me in her hand.  “As a reward for your devotion and faith in Me, I am giving you My favorite toy for the rest of the blessing’s duration!  If you can find the little pipsqueak, be as rough as you want – while My blessing lasts, you can’t break him!” 

A coarse grinding filled my ears and the skin around me went taut.  I looked up and saw a monolithic finger inexorably scraping toward me, the spacious plane of Gina’s manicured fingernail flush with her skin.  With nowhere to go it ran into me, and with a quick rush dug me out of my cover within her palm.  She dragged me the length of her palm, and with a flick threw me from her hand and sent me tumbling downward into the terrarium.

I landed hard and skipped several times before finally coming to a stop.  Before standing I took a second to shake the cobwebs out of my head, then surveyed the area around me.  No one too close that I could see, and if I could get back into the house I might be able to keep it that way.

The ground rumbled, breaking my train of thought, then it shook again with a crash.  A dirty, tattered running shoe was a few inches from me, and I looked up to see a pair of long, shapely legs that never seemed to end until they reached a pair of black running shorts.  Without even having to see the rest, I knew it was Roni.  Whether she had seen me though was a whole other issue.  This was already much more complex than I would have liked.

The enormous, tattered running shoe loomed over me, its rubber tip drooping far enough that it acted like a canopy for me.  At this size I noticed a multitude of tears and holes I had never seen before, the result of wearing the same pair of shoes for so long.  While it was true Gina brought her new shoes periodically she had never liked a single pair, and insisted on keeping the shoes she had been wearing when she shrank.  Ironically, it looked as if they would fall apart if she ever tried to run in them, even though was the only reason she continued wearing them.

“Do you see him?” Roni asked, her cold voice taking on a rumbling quality now that she was relatively gigantic to me.  I looked behind me and saw a pair of brown leather flats with pale, slender legs rising from them to be overtaken by a yellow, floral-patterned sun dress.  Continuing to crane my head back, I saw a curtain of brown hair and a familiar face. 

“No, not yet,” Vanessa replied, looking everywhere except where I stood.  Her voice was soft even though it overwhelmed my ears.  “He can’t have gotten far though, I saw him land around here.”

“Well, keep searching,” Roni commanded.  “I’ll stay here and look around, you go make sure none of the new blood finds him before we do.”  Vanessa nodded and turned, her plodding footfalls becoming weaker until I barely felt their tremors through the ground.

I knew that Roni wasn’t my biggest fan – at her best I’d say she was indifferent toward me – but it looked like her elitism had won out over her apparent distaste for me.  Getting found by her would be the least bad way this could go I supposed, especially if she and Vanessa worked together to keep me away from the more fanatical of Gina’s followers.  The last thing I needed was a mob thinking they were acting on divine mandate smashing me over and over again.

From what I could tell Roni stayed perfectly still, though I couldn’t see much beyond the tip of her beat-up shoe.  Calling out to her would be futile with the commotion from people looking for me so I didn’t bother.  My only hope of making sure she was the one who found me was climbing her until she felt something.

No time like the present, I told myself, and the prospect of winding up stuck to her worn rubber sole when she shifted a little weighed heavily on my mind.  I reached up and grabbed the drooping tip with both hands, then jumped and pulled myself up as hard as I could.  Years of climbing had paid off, and I easily scampered up onto the rubber platform hanging off the front of Roni’s destroyed shoe.  It hardly even budged with my weight, a testament either to the durability of the stitching or my complete physical insignificance.

After a quick hop I was on the shoe proper, its formerly bright white surface now a mottled gray.  I scrambled across the mesh, deftly avoiding the holes that had formed in it from excessive wear, and made it to the base of its tongue.  I grabbed onto the frayed, faded yellow shoe lace to help with the climb, and in only a matter of seconds made it to the top.  As though I were on a timer I let go of the string and shuffled to the outside, coming to rest against her protruding ankle bone – the last thing I wanted was to be squished between her thighs if she brought her legs together.

I looked up at Roni’s leg, hundreds of feet of vertical climb for me on mostly smooth skin.  She may not have liked the shoes Gina brought, but she certainly never turned down the razors our captor delivered.  While scaling such smooth legs would have daunted me back when they were Fulda’s, I had spent over half a decade climbing legs like these, but even longer.  This would be a cinch.

Carefully I sprung off Roni’s shoe and grabbed onto the round protrusion of her ankle, then scrambled up until I stood atop it.  I ran my hands along the sheer skin above me, probing for any crevices deep enough to slide my fingers into.  When I found one I quickly pushed myself up, then braced my feet where my fingers had previously been.  It was slow going, but not overly difficult, and I had learned the hard way that caution comes first when climbing a giantess.

I quickly settled into a rhythm, and barely even noticed when I reached Roni’s knee.  My mind had drifted to contemplating the bigger picture of my situation.  How long would I be invulnerable, able to feel the pressure but never get crushed?  Was it connected with her shrinking me again?  Had she decided this was my new size, and determined to leave me like this?  What if I grew right now, or while someone was holding me – would they grow too, thereby returning to normal size, and probably smashing everyone else in the terrarium?

Routinely I began climbing diagonally, moving along the side of her patella until I was between her thigh and shin.  She hadn’t noticed me at all on my trip up.  Was I that insignificant to her?  The question rested in the back of my mind as I made my way onto her thigh, setting course to go into her shorts.  I had no doubt she would notice me there, and she’d have to fish me out of her shorts.

About halfway up the broad, toned plain of her thigh, a shadow engulfed me.  I turned just enough to see an enormous hand speeding toward me, much too fast to avoid even with a freefall.  Roni’s fingers collided with me in a tremendous swat, flattening me against her skin and making my limbs splay out.  Briefly I remained stuck to her, but after a moment gravity peeled me off and I plummeted back to the terrarium’s floor to land next to her nearly-ruined shoe.

I laid on the ground beside her, groaning miserably and barely able to move.  My skin felt as though it were on fire from her slapping me, and the feeling of crushing pressure between her hand and thigh lingered.  Though my bones should have been shattered I could move, though even my pathetic wiggling made it hurt even more.  Still, I needed her to see me.

“A bug?  What the fuck?” Roni muttered, leaning over to examine where I had been when she swatted me.  “Haven’t seen a bug in years.”  She looked at her skin, and instead of the expected blood splatter found it to be perfectly clean.  Her eyes drifted to the floor, where they easily spotted me lying prone.  A smile spread across her face, and her spine straightened while she stood back up.

“Ah.  A bug,” she said, matter-of-factly.  She lifted her shoe and rotated it over me, her heel grinding against the plastic floor while it moved.  The shoe’s rubber sole had been worn flat, with no evidence that it had ever had a tread.  My muscles hurt too much to get up and run, so I could only watch while she positioned her foot perfectly.  A soft chuckle filtered down from on high, echoing in the crevice beneath her shoe to become even more menacing.

Roni slowly pressed her shoe down, clearly in no hurry to get this over with.  The rubber made contact with my feet, pinning me against the ground as I felt the tremendous, crushing pressure from it, and began rolling up my legs.  I screamed until I had no breath left, with the pain only getting worse as more of my body gave way beneath her.  By the time it was up to my shoulders the agony of being gradually smashed gave way to dull pain, and her foot held position for a moment.  With the pulsating trauma radiating through my body, the only thing I could think was how badly I had misread her.

After another wave of chuckles she brought the rest of her foot down, pressing it hard on top of me.  I distinctly felt my skull get crushed but remained unharmed, though it hurt like nothing I had ever experienced before.  Gina had essentially been barefoot, and the addition of a shoe sole to the already overwhelming pain of that made it so much worse.  The pressure increased while she pushed down harder, and I worried that even with Gina’s magic I would be flattened by Roni’s immense strength.

Finally the pressure abated, and with her shoe gone air rushed in to fill the vacuum.  I hadn’t realized how isolated I had been beneath it with even ambient sounds absorbed by what little rubber remained on Roni’s shoe.  Light practically assaulted my eyes as well, but my arms were too sore for me to even use them to shield my eyes.  I looked to the side and saw a blue eye the size of a building fixated on me, maniacal glee evident in the iris.  It must have been taking all of Gina’s willpower to keep from exploding into laughter.

“Up here,” Roni ordered, and I fought the tightness in my neck to turn to face her.  She was even more towering than I remembered, but she probably had her own ways of making people feel small.  Though she loomed large in my view thanks to my position between the toes of her shoes, I couldn’t miss the two shrunken giantesses standing across from her, one was a brunette that I think was a cheerleader, and another with straight dark hair that might have been on the field hockey team – at the very least she was dressed for it, Gina must have gotten her after practice.

“Our Goddess Gina’s high priest,” Roni announced, glaring down at me, “laid low by our Goddess, perhaps as a test of faith.  As our high priest, She entrusted you with our care and instruction in the ways of Her worship.  We all know that you have been negligent in your duty to Her, but have you at least maintained your duty to Her flock?”  I gulped, even though it hurt to swallow.

“I have with me two of Her most devout worshippers, who have each been here a month,” Roni continued.  “I expect you know them well.  Together the three of us will protect you.  All you have to do is tell me their names.”  The three of them looked down at me expectantly and I realized how screwed I was – the “cheerleader” was just wearing a short, pleated skirt, and the field hockey player was Asian.  I wasn’t even aware that there was an Asian in here with us.

“Um, well, let me think,” I stammered, trying to stall for time.  Maybe if I waited long enough whatever magic Gina had cast would wear out and I’d return to my normally shrunken size.  “I remember when you two came in together, and we all had that meeting where I found out who you are and where you came from…”  The two of them simply grinned and Roni tapped her foot, causing me to snap my mouth shut from surprise.

“You have five seconds to answer,” she said, practically spitting on me.  “I suggest you answer fast, so that you can stay the wrath of our radiant and all-powerful Gina.”  Shit.  I had no clue.

“Okay, so yeah, I remember you two, definitely.”  I pointed at the brunette.  “You’re Jessica, and you,” I pointed to the Asian, “are Kim.”  They began to smile, and I breathed a sigh of relief.  I guessed right!

“Actually, my name’s Liz,” said the short-skirted brunette.  “It’s one syllable, for fuck’s sake, how did you not remember it?  And to make things worse you called me the evil Goddess Gina cast out.”

“I’m Akane,” said the other woman, “and we didn’t get here at the same time!”  Her voice got louder until she was shouting.  “I’ve been here for months!  We’ve talked several times!  You even made a lame joke about my name and said it was to help you remember!”  Akane took a step forward, the toe of her brown penny loafer brushing against Roni’s sneaker.  She coiled her other leg until her heel touched her butt, poised to bring it down on me.

Adrenaline surged through my body, and the lingering soreness of being trapped beneath Roni’s shoe melted away.  I got to my feet and ran as fast as I could to get out from underneath Akane’s incoming stomp.  A terrible thunder crack sounded behind me, and I stumbled from the impact before a rush of air picked me up.  I tumbled along the floor until I came to a sliding stop just past Liz.  My skin felt as though it had been torn off despite being perfectly intact, and I pushed myself through the pain to get back up.

With a single stride Liz blocked my path with an exceptionally long blue kitten-heeled shoe, knocking me down when I ran into it.  She slowly dragged her other shoe along the floor, her toe scraping against the ground, until it popped up beside me.  I looked at the flat sole bearing down on me, gradually lowering to crush me just as Roni had.  A loud thud behind me drew my attention, and I saw a gigantic, filthy sneaker blocking my path so I couldn’t even scoot away.

Liz’s shoe continued pressing down on me, and I resigned myself to another battery of suffering.  Just then it rapidly shot away, to be replaced by the majestic sight of Vanessa standing above me, arms outstretched.  “Leave him alone!” she shouted.  “He’s been nothing but kind to me, so if you want him… you’ll have to go through me first!”  She stepped forward so that she stood astride me, hands on her hips.

“Okay,” was all Roni said, then lifted her foot for leverage.  With a great lean forward she shoved Vanessa as hard as she could, knocking her onto her butt with a great crash.  Apparently forgetting about me for a moment she advanced toward Vanessa, pressing her advantage on the downed woman.  Air rushed out of Vanessa’s lungs when Roni stepped on her chest, then the runner said, “Think carefully before you choose sides, things are changing fast here.”

With Roni gone, Akane’s path to me was open.  She lunged forward, her shoe striking the ground beside me with a terrifying impact, and rested her arms on her extended knee.  Her pitch-colored eyes found me, and her lips parted to reveal perfectly white teeth behind her smile.  “I’ll give you another chance,” she offered.  “What’s my name?”

“A- A-“ I stammered.  It was on the tip of my tongue, just in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t coming.  I looked up the monolithic height of her black sock pulled almost all the way up to her knee, then at the gigantic hands on either side of it.  The sparkle in her eyes distracted me, and I totally lost it.  It was like she wanted me to get it wrong.  “Amane?” I finally offered.

“Close, but no cigar,” Akane replied, grinning.  She slid a hand off her leg and swung it down at me, easily ensnaring me with her long fingers.  Akane shifted her grip until I rested between her thumb and forefinger, my whole chest and most of my legs wrapped in her fingertips.  “I think I know a way to help you remember, though.”  Quickly she stood, keeping me balanced perfectly in her grip despite the blood rushing to my feet.

“It’s Akane, with a K,” she said, bringing me closer to her face.  “You know, like kite, koala, and… kiss.”  Akane pressed me against her soft lips, pushing back gently with them before pulling me away.  “But it makes the same sound as something else on my mind.  Can you guess it?”  This close her breath hit me like a warm breeze, somehow retaining a touch of mint after all this time.  “Actually, you take too long to answer things, so I’ll just tell you.  It’s crush.”  Her face lit up at her own wit, and she slammed her fingers together.

Akane’s pinch sent a sharp pain through my body when her fingertips clasped, but it was far from what Gina and Roni had done to me.  Then I tried to breathe in and found that I couldn’t.  Her grip was so tight that my lungs couldn’t inflate.  I tried to inhale again, and her fingers only got tighter.  Frantically I struggled to get free, but Akane’s hold was too much.  All at once everything she held gave way to the insurmountable power of her fingers, and I screamed with the resurgent agony.

Only my head was poking out, so I got to see Akane laughing at my pain.  “This is really fun!” she declared.  “I’ll have to think of something to offer the great and powerful Gina for letting us play with you today.”  She twitched her fingers, sending a new wave of suffering through my would-be crushed body.  I cried out, and her smile grew a little wider.

Suddenly the pressure vanished, and I plummeted back to the floor.  Before I could even orient myself Akane had squared up, standing astride me with hands on her hips.  She glared at me, and the jovial look on her face belied the pleasure she was taking from this.  “Now, one more time: what’s my name?” she asked.

“A-Akane!” I sputtered, the name practically flying out of my mouth.

Akane’s eyes lit up.  “Wow, you finally know my name!  It only took three months and some torture, but you got it!”  Even though I satisfied her demand, she didn’t budge.  “Maybe you need some reinforcement to drive it home, though.”

“The blessing has ended,” came a terrific rumble from high above.  Past Akane’s head I saw the terrarium’s hatch open, and a colossal hand slipped through it.  “It’s time for Me to retrieve My boy toy.”  Gina’s hand descended toward us, a pair of tweezers gripped in two fingers.

Akane lifted a foot and held it over me.  “Akane, no!” I shouted.  “If you crush me now it’ll be for real!”

“We’ll see!” she replied, and brought it down.  A tremendous crash rang out and the ground shook violently enough to rattle every bone in my unbelievably sore body.  She smirked, then got brushed aside by a single titanic finger.

No sooner had Akane been brushed aside than Gina secured me between the two immense paddles of the tweezers, then slowly picked me up from the ground.  “Roni, Akane, Liz,” Gina’s inhuman rumble began while she slowly removed me from the terrarium, “for your clear demonstration of My teachings you will be rewarded.  Be patient, My faithful, and you will receive My gifts when the time is right.”

Gina deposited me in her waiting palm and released the tweezers, dropping me in a ditch between two minute contours of her skin.  Her monumental face lowered down to my level so that her nose, which dwarfed the largest ski slope, was lined up perfectly with me.  Tremendous, hungry blue eyes looked me over, and her abyssal pupils threatened to suck me in. 

“As for you, My little boy toy,” she boomed, her voice alone powerful enough to make me think the apocalypse was coming, “I’ve half a mind to leave you as puny and insignificant as you are and throw you to the mercy of My most faithful.  You certainly deserve it.”  Gina grinned, the infinitesimal laugh lines beside her eyes appearing as deep contours.  After letting me sweat she finished, “But that wouldn’t be very fun for Me, and I have plans for you tonight.”

The world contracted while Gina returned me to my normal shrunken size until I was merely cradled in her palm as though I were nothing instead of a speck who nearly got lost on her skin.  “I suggest you have fun while you can.  You might find things a little different when you get back.”  With that, Gina closed her fingers lightly around me to hold me in her fist and stepped away from the terrarium.

Gina’s two bounding steps jostled me inside her loose fist, tossing my arms and legs against the finger holding me against her palm.  Then there was a swift drop, causing the familiar rush of a roller coaster before it suddenly stopped, throwing me back against her palm.  She had taken me on this trip enough that even in the darkness I knew that she was sitting on her bed, but she had never taken me there quite this late before.  Given how harsh she had been to me the past couple days I didn’t expect this was for anything good.

After leaving me in suspense for a second, she peeled her fingers back, allowing me to see again.  Gina had the same mischievous smirk she wore when she had something “fun” in store for me that would inevitably leave me scared and humiliated.  I no longer expected she would kill me, though I might wish she had by the time this was over.

“Hey.  I’ve had you for six years, right?” Gina asked.

“A little longer, but yeah,” I hesitantly replied.  Not only did she rarely start her torment with questions, she knew damn well how long she’d had me; she practically lorded it over me that I’d been her property for so long.  She was definitely up to something.

“And I turned eighteen last month.”

“I remember.  What of it?”  I knew what she was getting at, I just wanted to be in denial a little longer.

“I figured that’s what you had been waiting for.”  I stayed silent, knowing she would elaborate on her own.  “Six years is a really long time for people to wait when they’re dating.”  Her insistence that we were dating never failed to shock me, but I remained quiet.  “To fuck.”

We looked at each other in silence for several seconds, but it was clearly my turn.  “Fuck?  You mean, have sex?”

Gina glared down at me, and I saw her fingers twitch inward.  “Of course I do, you little moron,” she said, seething.  “What the fuck else could that mean?”

“It’s just… is that a good idea?” I asked.  “I mean, you’re so much bigger than me, how would that even work?”

Gina raised me to her face until I was just next to her chin, with the tip of her nose over me and her fingers curled to make a wind tunnel from her mouth.  “Real talk, you little shit,” she hissed, the harsh wind from her voice battering my ears.  “I’ve been saving myself for you this whole time, do you think I couldn’t get literally any guy I wanted?  I’ve even done all that stuff Fulda told me you like to keep you happy.  If you don’t we’re breaking up.”

“But Gi-“

“Let me put this another way, small fry,” she boomed, cutting me off.  “You’re going in one of my holes tonight, it can be one we both enjoy or one you’re not coming out of.  What’s it gonna be?”

I gulped.  “When you put it that way, the choice is obvious.”  There was no doubt in my mind I’d regret this, but it was the only option I had to live through the night.

Gina’s smirk turned to a malicious grin.  “I knew you’d see reason,” she said, and lowered me until she was holding me in her lap.  Slowly the world rotated while she laid down on the bed, staying above the covers, and laid her ankles over the foot of her bed.  She tipped her hand over, dumping me out onto her tummy, and moved her hand away.

Enormous fingers gripped the button of Gina’s shorts, and with a quick jerk it had been unlatched.  She grabbed the tab of her zipper and slowly, as though trying to do it seductively, pulled it away from me, with each tooth making a low buzz when it separated.  She arched her back and let out a low moan, making them slide down her hips a bit, then seized the edges with her hands and forced them down to her knees.

Only her plain white panties kept her covered.  Gina traced around with her fingertips, then moved her hand back onto her stomach, pulling her shirt up a little.  I covered myself from her palm poised to strike, but instead of bringing it down she gently slid her fingers into her underwear.  Her wrist set down atop me, but I could still see her fingers maneuvering beneath the cotton.  “Figured I’d warm myself up for you,” she remarked, punctuating it with a soft moan.  I felt my dick twitch slightly thanks to her voice suffusing my body, then her wrist rolled clear from me.

With a quick shove her panties joined her shorts, revealing a thin strip of yellow hair on her pubis.  Not wanting to delay this any further I got up and started walking toward it, but a solid wall of fingers blocked my path.  “And just where do you think you’re going with those?” Gina purred, sending more vibrations through my body.  The wall turned into a single finger pointing down at me until it was level with the waist of my pants.  Carefully she worked a fingernail in then yanked them down along with my underwear, exposing my half-erect member.  I stepped out of them, then a tremendous hand came in behind me to whisk them away.

The smooth, porcelain skin turned into a well-kept lawn of blond pubic hairs that came up to my knees.  Despite their length I managed to avoid getting tangled in them on my journey, and after a minute I was standing atop a steep slope looking down.  A slit opened partway down, its opening slicked, and I knew that’s where I had to go.

Cautiously I turned around, and saw Gina looking at me expectantly over the crest of her breasts.  Sure that she would hurry me along if I didn’t, I quickly climbed down until I was face to face with her pussy lips.  Tentatively I ran my hand along one to see how it would react, and to my surprise it recoiled slightly from the touch.  I did it a couple more times until it stayed in place, trying to gauge how reactive it was.

I thought about some things to help me along: Gina chasing me in her stockings, Kristie sitting on me, Fulda trapping me between her thighs.  In no time at all I had a raging fear-boner, the only kind I’d had in years, and figured it wasn’t going to get any better.  Resolutely I grabbed the spongy skin of her pussy lips as tightly as I can and got to it, thrusting my dick inside Gina’s gaping vagina.  Mechanically I thrust back and forth, feeling the moistness on my penis with each motion.

“Are you in yet?” Gina called out after a minute.  “I can’t feel anything.”  I redoubled my efforts, going deeper with each thrust until my body was halfway inside her vagina.  “Ugh, your cock is too small to do anything,” she said after a few more seconds.  “Try climbing in.”  Despite doing my best she didn’t even show a biological reaction to me fucking her, and I wanted to stay outside.

Gina’s fingers crested the edge of her pubis.  “Here, let me give you a little help,” she purred, swinging two fingers downward.  One of them caught me in the back and shoved me into her vagina.  Immediately I was drenched by her pussy juices, and in the darkness I lost all sense of direction.  Her fingers forcefully guided me through the dark cavern, and I quickly found a small, fleshy nub shoved against my gut.

Reflexively I began thrusting against it, realizing only after a half-dozen thrusts that this was Gina’s clit.  Her fingers held me firmly against it while I worked, and her vaginal walls began to secrete in waterfalls.  “Now I feel you inside me!” she bellowed, making the world around me shake with her voice.  She moaned loudly, making the cavern rumble even more, and I thrusted harder. 

My vigorous activity was answered by a series of loud moans from Gina, accompanied by her slowly lifting her hips from the mattress.  I barely even noticed her fingers sliding out from behind me I was so involved in fucking her, hoping to get this over with as quickly as possible.  Involuntarily I came, spurting my semen onto Gina’s clit in several powerful bursts.

Weakness permeated my body, but before I could collapse around the small bean I was holding a torrent of fluid washed over me.  The tidal wave of Gina’s queef gushed forward and carried me out of her vaginal canal.  Her room’s lights assaulted my eyes when I spilled out onto her mattress, and I gasped in air that I didn’t even realize I had been missing.

Exhausted from sex and soaked in Gina’s pussy juice I stayed where I was between her legs, staring at the ceiling.  Every now and then one of her legs would twitch and I heard her giggle from far away.  The whole experience was so surreal for me that I could scarcely believe what had happened.  Gina had basically used me to masturbate, but let me finish the job myself.  I had to admit it was more rewarding than humping Fulda’s nipple, but much more dangerous too.

We both laid mostly still on the bed for several minutes until the mattress sloped strongly toward Gina, indicating that she was sitting up.  Her feet unhooked from the bed frame and she brought them inward and crossed them, forming a solid barrier several times my height.  Apparently she had kicked off her shorts while I was inside her.  Finally strands of yellow hair came into view beyond her pubis, followed by her face with pupils dilated and mouth upturned.

“Was it good for you too, my little boy toy?” she asked.  “I know it was, you’ve been looking forward to it for years.”  One of her hands slid off her thigh, and I was powerless to move away from her encroaching fingers even if I wanted to.  Easily she snatched me up between her thumb and forefinger and lifted me from the mattress to deposit me in her other palm.

“I know you want to cuddle with me now,” she said, bringing me down into her lap, “but even after that I can’t be sure you won’t try to run, and the thought of my little boy toy out there, scared, tiny, and alone until someone crushes him in the morning, fills me with such sadness.  You have to go back in with the others.”

Gina’s other hand came back, this time holding a tissue.  She handled me bodily with it, cleaning all of her fluids off me until I was left mostly dry, with only my shirt fairly damp.  Then she dropped my pants beside me, and gestured for me to put them on.  Gleefully I complied, since even though I had been entirely inside her just moments before I still felt self-conscious while naked in front of her.

She didn’t even wait for me to be fully clothed before standing, but I was able to at least get my pants buttoned before she reached the terrarium.  Slowly she lowered me into it, then tilted her fingers so that I slid down them the rest of the way.  Her hand withdrew and closed the latch, then she tapped on the ceiling glass.

“You’ve all had a big day for things so small!” she declared, and followed it with a giggle.  “Be sure you don’t sleep in tomorrow though, since there are going to be some huge changes tomorrow!  Sleep tight!”  With a single swipe of her arm she turned the light out, casting us into darkness yet again.

I took a step toward the tiny house, only to run into a wall with my face hitting some soft cushions.  “Hey, watch it,” someone said, and I recognized it was Roni’s voice.  She firmly grabbed my arm and started leading me toward the house.

“’Watch it?’  That’s all you have to say to me after today?” I asked.

“Shh.  We can talk about it tomorrow.”  Roni guided me all the way to my room, then pushed me onto the bed.  “Goodnight.”  She closed the door, and I heard her footprints resonating on the plastic floor while she walked away.

Exhausted from everything that had happened since Gina came home that day I stretched out as much as I could and closed my eyes.  Not even concern for what would happen in the morning kept me awake, and I soon fell into a dreamless sleep.

Three pounding thuds tore me out of my slumber, and the rattling of a glass pane bounced around in my skull.  I tried to squeeze my eyelids shut, but there was already light pouring in through the broken windows and onto my face.  “Oh, My little worshippers!” Gina boomed in a sing-song voice.  “It’s time for Me to issue My divine decree, so get your asses into the courtyard now!”

I wanted to roll back over and make her come get me, but right then Roni passed by the doorway.  “Hey, c’mon dude,” she said, stepping into my room.  “You know she wants you out there.  Don’t make her come get you.”  One of her strong hands seized my shoulder, and with a quick yank she had pulled me out of bed.  I landed on the floor with a crash, but Roni held her grip and had me back on my feet quickly.

Roni walked behind me as we walked, practically shoving me in front of her while we made our way over to the others.  She brought us to our usual spot front and center in front of Gina, the giantess beaming down at her assembled tiny captives.  We stood still for a few minutes while the human skyscraper looked us over before she slapped her hand on the roof, bringing us all to attention.

“Will My boy toy please step forward?” she said, looking directly at me.  Damn, Gina had put me on the spot.  I started taking a step forward, and a firm shove from Roni sent me stumbling several steps away from the group.  So this was how she wanted to end it?  Use me for her pleasure, then annihilate me front of everyone?  She always had a touch for the theatrical.

“Now, listen carefully and do exactly as I say.  Roni, Akane, and Liz.  Come forward and stand directly in front of My boy toy, as close as possible, facing him.”  The three complied, and in a few seconds I was face to chest with Roni, with the other two close enough I could barely raise my arms without bumping into them.  All of them were looking down at me, but I couldn’t read anything in their enigmatic expressions.  “Place your hands on your hips and spread your feet.”  Again the trio immediately followed her order, and Roni and Akane smirked.  They must have had some idea what was next.

“Now watch and learn the lessons well, My faithful.”  Gina had returned to addressing the assembly as a whole, promising to let us know what this was all about very soon.  “If you believe in Me and follow My teachings, you will grow mighty and strong.  Deny My powers, however, and you will wither and dwindle beneath My gaze.”  She snapped her fingers, sending a loud crack through the air.

The wall of women in front of me began to stretch upward.  They closed ranks, and I was unable to see anything aside from the barrier in front of me as it continued to loom larger.  In no time I was level with Roni’s waist, then with the others.  Another snap rang out and the began growing again, much more rapidly this time.  I blinked and I was below Roni’s shorts, with my view quickly running down her thighs.  It continued until I was looking up at her knees, and roughly level with the knees of the other two: my chin was just above the top of Akane’s black socks.

“With this I anoint Roni, Akane, and Liz as My high priestesses, and cast My boy toy down into a stature more fitting of his new role.  The rest I leave to My new clergy, for whom I will raise a new palace when I return today.”  Gina surveyed her assembled shrunken prisoners, clearly visible above and behind the indomitable wall, beaming at yet another of my humiliations.  She took a step back, turned, and with two long strides passed the threshold and shut the door behind her.

The trio stood proudly above me, relishing their new positions.  I wanted to back away, to run from them before they could do anything more than menace me, but I was rooted to the spot.  My legs refused to move no matter how much I told them to get me away from there.  Roni’s legs tensed, causing me to flinch backward, though all she did was smirk down at me.  “Okay Roni, before you do anything rash, let’s –“

“Quiet,” she interrupted, her size-bolstered voice infused with confidence.  “We were friends.  Kind of.  But Gina anointed us and showed everyone how wicked you are, so things have to change.  For starters, you’re going to call me Veronica from now on.”

“But Roni –“

“Wrong!  It’s Veronica!”

“But R- Veronica,” I quickly corrected myself, “don’t you see what Gina’s doing?  She’s just found a new way to humiliate me, she doesn’t give two shits about your loyalty or service!”

“Sounds like sour grapes,” Roni replied, grinning.  “You got complacent and lost Her favor, and you’re trying to drag me down with you.”

“How can you believe Gina’s a goddess?” I protested.  “You know she isn’t, she’s the one who cost you your whole future!  If it weren’t for her you’d be off at college instead of temporary ruler of a glorified fish tank.”

“I’ll let this small-minded outburst pass, but be mindful of your blasphemy in the future.  I can do much worse than make you call me by my real name.”  She lifted her leg high and I braced myself for a kick to the head.  Luckily it never came, and the sole of her shoe didn’t even graze my head when she stepped over me.  Roni lingered for a moment with me between her legs before raising her other one and guiding it over my shoulder, then walking toward the throng of her new flock.

Briefly I watched Roni bathe in their admiration, wondering how long she could keep up the act of worshipping Gina, before I turned to gaze out the unobstructed glass wall.  My attention was taken before it got there though, stolen by dark eyes peering at me above two pale humps.  I stood entranced, looking up at Akane towering over me even while squatting.  She stared back, her expression hidden behind her knees while she studied me.

Finally she giggled, breaking the silence.  “My, how the tables have turned,” Akane began.  “Just yesterday you were the most powerful person in this box, and now you’re the weakest!”  She cackled and reached forward, poking me in the nose with her pointer finger before I could get out of the way of her long arm.  “You’re even cuter now though, and since you’ve been humbled you should be less of an asshole, too.” 

Akane placed her hands on her knees and pressed up until she was standing at her full height.  While she loomed over me I resisted the urge to look up her pleated skirt, doing my best to focus on her eyes.  The grin remained on her face as she stood there, making me intensely aware of how the power dynamics had changed.  “I just know we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other now,” she said, then stepped away, exaggerating her hips while she went to join Roni.

“Hey.”  All I wanted was a few minutes to myself, but fall from grace had made me more popular than ever.  I turned to the voice, expecting to see Liz ready to get her licks in, but was instead met with skin-tight denim clinging to a crotch.  I looked up the gray V-neck to a pair of green eyes looking down at me from beneath some chestnut bangs.  “When I said I thought you’d be taller the other day, I didn’t…” she trailed off.

“Oh, hey Vanessa,” I said, fighting the urge to look down at the floor.  “Are you here to taunt me, too?”

“What?  No!” Vanessa replied, taken aback by the very suggestion.  “I just thought you could use a friend, and since you helped me out I figured I should do the same.”

“Well, thanks,” I said.  “Right now I just need to be alone though, this is a lot to take in.”

Vanessa knelt so that we could be face to face.  “Look, I know how you feel, but that’s not the answer.  You’re not alone, and you don’t have to be.  Go ahead and try me, it’ll feel good to get it off your chest.”

I sighed.  “Sure, I’ll give it a shot.  I guess the biggest issue I have with it is…”  A pair of powerful legs came to a stop behind Vanessa, and I looked up to see Liz looking down at us disdainfully, arms crossed under her breasts.

“Is the twerp bothering you?” Liz’s powerful voice demanded before Vanessa could entreat me to continue.

“No, I’m talking to him.  He’s my friend.”

Liz stepped around her and placed the sole of her enormous brown flat against my chest.  With a forceful shove she pushed me back, knocking me to the ground so hard I slid into the glass pane where I stopped with a thud.  “Leave her alone!” she shouted.  “You’re not good enough to talk to her or anyone else beyond groveling, heathen!”  She turned back to Vanessa and continued, much more gently, “I’m sorry about that, he hasn’t learned his place yet.  I’ll keep an eye on you, and if I see him talking to you again I’ll deal with him much more harshly.”  Her huge hand grabbed Vanessa by the shoulder and pulled her away while all she could do was give me a helpless look.

Gina set her lunch tray down on the table she always took, where the other students knew to leave her alone or risk facing her wrath.  She pulled out her chair and was about to sit down when a voice grabbed her attention.  “Hey, Gina!”  With a groan the amazon turned to see Kristie coming toward her, with a boy about half her size struggling to keep up.  “So, what do you think?”

“Of what?” Gina replied, pretending not to notice the munchkin trailing behind her.  “Is that a new outfit?  It looks great on you!”

“Thanks, it is!” Kristie answered.  “But I meant my new boyfriend.”  She gestured to the boy gawping up at her, then pointed at Gina.  “Alex, this is my best friend, Gina.  Gina, Alex.”  The boy gave a timid wave up at Gina, then went back to trying to hide behind Kristie.

“Oh, we’ve met before.”  Gina took two steps forward so that she was almost on top of Alex and could look straight down at him.  “Alex and I were almost inseparable growing up, weren’t we?”  She winked at the small man, certain she still intimidated him.

“Y-yeah, I guess you could say that,” he stammered, craning his neck back to look at Gina towering over him.  “W-we were in a lot of the s-same classes, u-until a few years ago.”

Gina regarded her puny classmate with a smirk.  He was even more pathetic than she remembered, not even reaching the bottom of her shorts unless he stood on the very tips of his toes.  The way he cowered from her made it clear that he remembered more than he was letting on about her, too.  She had many fond memories of tormenting him with Shelby, with one of them pinning him down while the other towered over him, mocking him for whatever they figured would bother him that day.  It occurred to her that if they tried that now they might very well crush him, which only intrigued her further.

“Kristie told you about the sleepover at my house tonight, right?”  Alex gulped loud enough for Gina to hear, then nodded.  “And you’ll be there like a good little boyfriend?”  He nodded again, this time without the exaggerated gulp.  “Good!  I look forward to reliving old times with you.”  The two of them shared an uncomfortable silence: Alex was much less excited by the idea than Gina.

Kristie saw Shelby’s towering figure enter the cafeteria on the opposite side and decided to wrap it up.  “Alex, why don’t you go have lunch with your friends?  We have a lot to talk about, what with the sleepover tonight and all, and I don’t want you to be bored.  I’ll be by to pick you up before it though, ‘kay?”  He practically stumbled away, eager to get away from Gina.

“You said he was short,” Gina began, not even waiting for him to get out of earshot, “but he’s like the shortest guy in the class.  He’s practically a midget.”  She leaned in close and excitedly added, “You did good, girl!”

Enormous shoes slapping against tile heralded Shelby’s arrival.  “Hey, what’s going on?” the auburn-haired bully asked, oblivious to the departure of Kristie’s diminutive boyfriend.

Gina took a moment, thinking about how best to phrase this.  “So, you remember our old friend Alex?”

“Yeah, how could I forget?”

“Well, it turns out Kristie’s dating him!”

“No way!”

“Way!  And he’s gonna be at the party tonight!  You’re bringing a guy too, right?”

“Of course!”  Shelby ran her hands down her long body as though presenting herself.  “Like any guy could resist this.  He’s not quite as short as Alex is, but then again who is?”

Gina nodded enthusiastically.  There weren’t even any girls at the school shorter than him, and for good reason.  “Glad to hear it.  I’ll make sure Julie and Ashley are bringing their boyfriends too so that we can all have fun tonight.”  Tonight would be the first time Gina managed to get all of her friends – not coincidentally, the starting lineup of the basketball team – under her roof since both her sisters had left for college, and so the first chance to share her greatest pleasure with them.

“Yeah, I hope so,” Shelby said.  “Look, can we just fucking eat?  I got held up and I’m fucking starving.”  She went to get food and Gina sat at their reserved table, propping her feet up in the opposite chair to keep her knees from bumping against the table.

The door flew inward, sending me toppling back from surprise.  Gina usually came home excited, but today she was on the verge of bursting with energy.  “Hello, My tiny worshippers!” she bellowed, loud enough that I had to clutch my ears.  “How are you all doing today?”  She strode toward the terrarium, carefully cradling her bag instead of tossing it on the ground like most other days.  “I trust My boy toy is well?”

Roni moved so that she stood astride me, giving me no choice but to look at her towering over me.  “He is, My Goddess,” she shouted so that the delusional megalomaniac outside could hear her.  “Your high priestesses have made sure no one so much as laid a finger on him while You were gone.”  Semantically she was right; Liz’s huge foot nearly shattering my ribs didn’t count as a finger.

“Good!  Just keep him in one piece for a little longer, I need him for tonight.  And as a reward for your dedication, I’ll make good on My promise from this morning.”  Gina’s hand plunged into her bag, and when she withdrew it she was clutching a house by the roof.  With little difficulty she lifted the lid on the side of the terrarium opposite the old, run-down house, and carefully set the new one down against the wall.  “Now My most deserving followers will have a fitting abode, with accessories to match.”

The new house was easily twice the size of the old one, with four great columns evenly spaced along the façade.  It was immaculate, as though it really had been formed out of Gina’s mind.  I knew better though, and this was beyond even her significant powers.  The only thing I couldn’t explain was the quick turn-around.  Fulda had spent months designing and building the house I had spent the past six years in, and there was simply no way Gina went through the same amount of effort.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say she shrank an entire house herself just for this.

Roni knelt before what she had recently decided was her goddess, barely missing crushing my foot with her kneecap.  “Thank you, My Goddess,” she declared, somehow keeping the words from turning to ash in her mouth.  “We shall strive daily in our service to You to prove that we are worthy of Your gifts.”  She grabbed my hand as she stood, forcing me to rise along with her.

She looked down at me, jubilation in place of the scorn I expected.  “As for you, you little heathen,” she began, “I can think of nothing better for your rehabilitation than living in the shadow of our magnificent Gina’s most devout.”  Roni set off for her new house, practically dragging me along as I struggled to keep up with her tremendous strides.  I caught Vanessa’s gaze while I was being led in front of the crowd, but all she could do was look on in despair at me being forced into the service of a trio of sycophants.

Gina dropped her bag with a dull thud and stepped away from the terrarium, eager to begin preparations for that night.

I stood on my toes atop a chair so I could hold the strands of blond hair firmly in my fingers while I wove them together, trying to get the braid as tight as possible.  Roni had been forcing me to braid her hair for the past two hours, undoing them each time I had nearly finished because, as she said, my “tiny fingers should do better than this.”  My fingers ached from the repetitive motions, but when I caught Roni’s reflection in the mirror her usual stony face gave me no indication of her attitude.

When there was scarcely enough loose hair remaining to grip I rolled one of the bands up my wrist and slid it onto the bottom of Roni’s interlinked hair strands.  I wound it around a few more times to make sure it would hold before releasing the hair so it could swing gently onto her back.  To check my work she turned her face left, then right, carefully inspecting for stray hairs.  Finally, she gave a thin smile and sat up in her chair.

 “There’s room to improve,” Roni began, “but you’re learning.  Go do whatever you want until one of us needs you again.”  I stepped away from her, but a powerful hand grabbing the back of my shirt stopped me.  “Don’t be rude.  What do you say when you get dismissed?”

I grumbled.  “Thank you, Roni,” I muttered, eager for her to let me go.

Roni jerked hard on my shirt, practically dragging me in front of her.  She pressed my face against her knee and wagged a finger to admonish me.  “Thank you, Veronica,” she corrected, then clicked her tongue.  “Sounds like you still have a lot to learn.  Akane’s in the next room trying to get her garters just right, go see her for another lesson.”  She tugged my shirt again, pulling me away from her leg hard enough I was sent sprawling on the floor.

Slowly I pushed myself off the floor and groaned, surprised I still had some pride to bruise.  Through a doorway I saw Akane fussing with the outfit Gina had left her, alternatively tugging at the short skirt and low neckline.  I signed and crossed the threshold toward her, looking at the floor so I wouldn’t have to crane my neck looking up at her.

Akane must have heard my footsteps on the hardwood floor since she turned around before I could say anything.  “Oh, it’s our delicious little man!” she exclaimed.  “And what brings you to bask in my presence?”

“R- Veronica asked me to-“

“I’m sorry,” Akane interrupted, her voice easily overpowering mine, “but I can’t make out a word you’re saying down there.  Could you please address me instead of my shoes?”

I squeezed my eyes shut a moment then tilted my chin up so I was looking at Akane’s face.  Her bright red lips were pulled tight in a grin, and with her dark hair up in a bun I could clearly see her eager eyes staring down at me.  “Veronica asked me to-“ I tried, but she cut me off again.

“Are you lost, my adorable pet?” she asked, smiling wider.  “Veronica’s in the room you just came from.  In case you forgot again, my name’s Akane.”  She paused briefly.  “If you’re here to talk to me, I would suggest starting with my name, not someone else’s.”  I cleared my throat to start over, but before my lips even opened she interjected one more time.  “And don’t forget that I have a title now, too.  I’m not normally one to stand on formalities – especially with you, my miniature friend, whom I stand so far above to begin with – but we should build this habit before the rabble outside sees us getting too familiar, don’t you think?”  Her eyes glimmered while she relished the power she had over me.  “Now go on, give it one more shot.”

I inhaled deeply through my nose to center myself and buy a couple seconds to think about how I could lay it on thick.  “High Priestess Akane,” I said as confidently as possible, “I was hoping you would allow me the pleasure of helping you look your finest by fastening your garters for you.”

Akane’s lips spread further, revealing the pearly white teeth behind her smile.  “Aren’t you a little charmer!” she said, bending over to muss my hair.  She kicked off her high heeled shoes with a clatter, then stood close enough to feel my breath on her knee.  I heard a high-pitched zipper, then her black satin dress fell to the floor.  “In fact, you’re so eager to help I’ll let you work on the whole ensemble.”  Quickly she stepped back out of her dress and winked down at me.  “And if you do a good job I might let you help me with something else later.”

Akane’s teasing was just as bad as constantly being berated by Roni, but at least I didn’t get the feeling she held some sort of grudge against me.  I looked Akane’s slender body up and down – mostly up – so that I could at least get something out of this.  Black stockings hung loose around her knees, and metal fasteners dangled from a black garter at the top of each thigh.  Black panties clung tight out of reach, and a black bra did what it could to accentuate her chest.  She gazed down at me with a mysterious expression, as though her promises were more than just empty teasing.

“Well?” she asked.  Akane lifted her right leg, then rotated it on the ball of her foot until her calf was bumping against my chest, then set her heel back down.  I looked up the magnificent column of her pale leg, my arms involuntarily wrapping around her shin.  “You gonna get started, or have you already lost your enthusiasm?”  Oh right, I was supposed to be helping her get dressed.  I pinched the top of her stocking and pulled it upward, but at their fullest extent my arms didn’t even reach halfway up her thigh.  Hoping she wouldn’t notice I tried hopping up, but still fell well short of the fasteners – not that I would have been able to work them like that, anyway.

Musical giggling came from above.  “I’m sorry, diminutive dude,” Akane’s strong voice began, “but are my legs too long for you to reach?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, looking down at her ankle.  Akane asked me to repeat, so I looked up at the length of leg towering over me and practically shouted, “Yes, High Priestess Akane, your legs are too long for me to reach the top of them!”

“Oh, stop!” she replied.  “There’s no need to be so formal, you’re making me blush!”  She had just said the opposite a minute ago, but I had been around giant women long enough to know that this was simply part of their game.  I made a mental note to try it, however, and test how dedicated she was to her role.

Akane took a step back and squatted in front of me, peering down from above the ruffled nylon on her knees.  From the color in her cheeks I saw that she actually was blushing.  Her wide, dark eyes seemed warm and inviting, as though I could crawl inside them were she Gina’s size.  “I’d really hate for your eagerness to go to waste,” she said, snapping me out of my thoughts.  “Let’s get your pint-sized body higher up so you can help me out, hm?”

She had decided for me, and before I could answer Akane had slid her hands under my arms.  Gripping me tightly around the chest she hoisted me from the ground, lifting me as though I were a small child.  Briefly she held me against her chest, letting my feet dangle against her thighs while she looked for somewhere to set me down.  It only took her a few moments, and after a single step she bent down to deposit me on a knee-height table, leaving me just a little shorter than her legs.

I hesitated, sure that this was a trick.  No doubt she was planning to “accidentally” slam her knee into me, knocking me down and pushing me off the table.  “Are you waiting for something, my itty-bitty boy?” Akane asked.  “If you need me to I can lie down, but you don’t want me to wrinkle my dress because of you, do you?”  It finally registered that Akane might not have any intention of abusing me – at least, not physically.

“Just sizing you up, Akane,” I replied, expecting a harsh rebuke.

Instead of correcting me, she giggled.  “You might want to skip that,” Akane said.  “For someone your size that might take all day.”  She chuckled at her own joke, and I felt a little more at ease.  It really seemed like she simply wanted me to be involved in her fun.

In any case, she wasn’t going to let me go anywhere until she was immaculately dressed.  I bent over and grabbed the top of her stocking, then pulled it as tight as possible when I stood.  With a grunt I held it in place while reaching up to grab the strap, just barely managing to snag it with the tip of a finger.  Careful not to rip the nylon, I pulled the two together and looped it into the clasp.  Quickly I slid it up the hook, then moved as swiftly as I could on the other leg.

Akane’s hand slid down her thigh, and she teasingly fingered the taut strap holding a stocking up.  “Ooh, that’s solid work!” she declared, snapping the elastic against her skin.  “You’re only halfway done, though.”  Slowly she turned away from me, and I saw two more straps dangling over her butt.  I noted that, for someone so thin, she had a surprisingly round, full rear.  Her derriere distracted me while I fumbled to fasten the garters on her back, but with the front already secured even my distracted hands were able to finish in no time.

“Mmm, if you keep this up I’ll have to steal you from the others so you can do this full-time,” she purred, plucking at the recently fastened straps with a fingertip.  Akane didn’t dwell on the stockings, though, and leaned over me to pick up her dress in one hand and her high heels in the other.  She took a second to relish looming over me, then knelt to set everything back on the ground.

When Akane stood again her dress was halfway on, the top hanging loosely from her waist.  Methodically she slipped her arms into the short sleeves so it covered her chest, leaving a long slit open down the length of her back.  “Would you mind giving me a hand?” she asked, pointing toward the zipper hanging loose.  “I can’t quite get it myself.  Just, I don’t know, slap my ass when you have a good grip, all right?”

Without thinking twice I reached up and pinched the zipper tab, then sprung vertically and hit Akane’s right butt cheek with my open hand, sending it rippling outward.  Before I even landed she began to sit, and I had to grasp with both hands to keep the zipper from flying out of my hands while she raced past me.  In two seconds I heard the meaty thud of her butt on the floor, and the zipper was yanked out of my hand.

Briefly Akane ran a hand along the neckline of her dress, then leaned her head back far enough that it could rest against the table.  “We make a pretty good couple,” she mused, gazing up at me standing at the table’s edge.  I was taken aback by the volume of her voice so close to me, but it was far from the inhuman rumble I had to deal with occasionally.  “We’re not quite done, though.”  She reached up, and before I could move her huge hands had grabbed me by the chest again.  Effortlessly she picked me up from the table and swung me over her head, setting me down between her extended legs.

“There’s just one more thing,” Akane said with a smirk.  She reached behind her, and when she turned back to me she was holding a pair of high heels, each the size of a small car.  Carefully she set them down sideways in front of me with a loud click, then pulled her hand free.  They came halfway up my thighs, and were long enough to stretch from my feet nearly all the way to my shoulders.  I reached under the nearest one and picked it up by the heel and toe.  It was light enough, but its sheer bulk gave me trouble, and would only be able to manage the one.

Leaning back to help with the balance I walked the length of Akane’s legs until I was beside her feet, the black suede rubbing against my face the whole way.  She helpfully pointed her foot away from herself, and with some careful maneuvering I managed to slide it over her black-clad toes.  She lifted her heel up, and I dutifully walked the length of her sole to stand behind her heel.  Gingerly I worked it over the curve, then struck the base of the shoe’s heel several times until it was snug against her foot.  Once I was satisfied, I grabbed the strip of leather running across her ankle and worked it through the brass buckle opposite it, completely securing it to her.

“Let me save you a trip,” Akane said.  “Think fast!”  I looked up in surprise, and saw her other shoe barreling toward me.  I tried to duck out of the way, but for once I wasn’t small enough and it hit me right in the chest.  Akane’s shoe staggered me backward until I toppled over.  She burst into laughter while I laid on my back for a moment, letting her have her fun.  “I said think fast!” she bellowed, starting another peal of laughter.

Clearly this wasn’t going to subside anytime soon, and I wanted to get on with it.  I stood back up and walked toward her shoe, but Akane slammed her stocking-clad foot in front of me, blocking my path.  “You know, you’re actually lucky,” she began, pushing on my chest with her toes.  “If you were just a little bit smaller, you’d be able to fit inside my shoe.”  She jabbed at me again, driving me back.  “Would you like that?  Being small enough to fit in my shoe?”  Her foot rushed forward, driving me along with it.  Suddenly it stopped, and I stumbled backward.  “I think I’d like it if you could.  You wouldn’t be able to dress me, but we could do… other things.”

Akane’s foot pulled back, and she held it aloft and pointed like she had her other one.  I pondered what the hell had just happened while I picked up her other cumbersome shoe and worked through the same process to get it onto her foot.  Was all of this simply an elaborate process to get me to let my guard down?  Maybe she was just trying to have fun with me the way she’d seen the others and it didn’t mean anything?  No answer was forthcoming as I secured the second strap in its buckle, and I suspected none would be for quite some time.

When both her shoes were on Akane pulled her legs inward, then gracefully stood.  She stomped each foot twice, making a loud crack each time when her shoe hit the hard wood floor, then stepped forward.  She spread her feet so that she stood astride me, the toes of her shoes equally distant from me.  I looked up at her knees, the fine mesh giving them a dusky color, and kept craning back until I saw her smirking down at me.

Akane clasped her hands in front of her chest and bent over with an apologetic look in her eyes.  “Hey.  You might be miniaturized, but you’re more than enough man for me,” she said, maintaining the smirk.  “And you know everything I do to you is in good fun, right?”  I couldn’t see any way out of this, so I simply nodded enthusiastically.  She lit up and continued, “Yeah, I knew you’re a good sport.  I want to hang on to you longer, but Liz would be furious if I hogged you, so…” Subtly she bit her lip while she trailed off.  Then she whispered, “Come back when she’s done with you, okay?  I’ll have a surprise ready for you.”

Three tremendous thuds resonated through the air, disrupting whatever plans Akane had for me.  “Oh, boy toy!” Gina boomed, her enormous voice suffusing the air.  “My guests are arriving, and I want you to meet them!  I bet you want to, too.  They’re your favorite kind of person, after all – gigantic women!”  Her laughter rattled the glass panes of the terrarium and shook the house’s walls.  “So stop being shy and get out here!”

Akane looked down at me and shrugged.  “I guess you’ll need a raincheck for that,” she said.  “The desires of my Goddess take priority over my own whims.  Try to come back in one piece, okay?”  Gently she shoved me toward the door with a shoe, forcing me away from her.  As I walked toward the door I spotted Liz in the next room glaring at me.  If she insisted on getting her “turn” with me after it might be better for me to perish at the hands of Gina or one of her guests.

I exited the mansion and froze.  Instead of her usual outfit, Gina was wearing a flowing, black velvet robe with elaborate symbols sewn into the fabric with gold thread.  Its plunging neckline revealed more cleavage than I had ever seen on her, and a slit ran up her right leg all the way to her waist.  She had a large silver ring on each finger, and a golden pentagram dangled from a chain on her neck, resting between her breasts.  Around the room a series of candelabras had been lit, and on the floor between her bed and closet was an enormous rug with another pentagram in the center.

“Come closer,” Gina’s voice beckoned while she opened a gate in the terrarium’s lid.  Involuntarily I walked toward her as though I were compelled by her voice alone, and she slid a hand through the open hatch.  “You have nothing to fear from Me.  In fact, I’m about to make your greatest wish come true!”  Everyone watched silently, entranced while I mechanically moved toward what was simultaneously the sweetest and strongest voice I had ever heard.

Finally I was allowed to come to a stop beneath Gina’s open palm, her fingers spread wide.  “Feel free to watch Me tonight, My worshippers, for I shall allow you to witness the true power of a Goddess.  And for My priestesses, as a reward for looking after My favorite toy… I suggest you look in the library so that you can better enforce My will.”

While Gina spoke I stood frozen in place beneath her wide open palm, staring at the deep lines crossing her pale skin.  I wanted to run screaming away from her and take cover in one of the houses, behind someone, beneath the years-old chicken bone, but I couldn’t.  My legs simply weren’t listening to my brain’s commands.

Gina’s hand rushed toward me.  I tried to leap forward and escape her grip, but it was like my legs were full of concrete.  Helplessly I watched her hand descend toward me, fingers curling inward, unable to escape whatever hell she had planned for me.

Gina’s tremendous fingers drew closer until her fingertips pressed against me, pinning my arms to my side.  My body remained stock still while she slowly lifted me out of the terrarium, a combination of her vise-like hold on my body and whatever magic she was using to make me unable to resist her commands.  All I could do was look down with trepidation as the terrarium’s floor got further away and I was drawn into whatever torment Gina had planned for me that night.

At the end of my inexorable ascent Gina turned me around so that I could face her.  The candlelight radiating throughout the room threw shadows on her face, giving her an almost demonic appearance, but that wasn’t the only thing different about her.  She had drawn dark circles around her eyes with a whimsical flick from their corners, giving them a winged look, and for once she had let her hair out of its braids so that it flowed in a single golden waterfall.  Her eyeliner contrasted sharply with her light skin, which seemed to be radiating energy on its own.

Gina gave me a slight pinch, nearly cracking my bones from the pressure, but to my surprise it barely hurt at all.  Her dark red lips pulled up in a grin, and she purred, “Finally, My ensemble is complete.”  A deafening chime rang out and her smile spread.  “And just in time.  Would you like to come meet My guests?”  I couldn’t want anything in the world less, but Gina already knew that.  No matter what I was going to be incorporated into her party in some way.

Purposefully, Gina lowered me from her face, driving me toward her cleavage.  Just before dropping me in, however, she suddenly changed course, pressing me toward the brilliant medallion hanging just above her breasts.  She turned me around when I was nearly touching the glinting gold surface so that she could pin me against it with the edge of her gigantic index finger.  “Just hang tight for a minute,” she rumbled, making my insides shake from her voice.  As though at her command a spectral chain erupted from each point of the medallion, seizing me by the wrists, ankles, and waist so that I would be held securely against it.

The chiming racket sounded again, and Gina hastened toward the door.  Each step she took made the pentagram I was secured to swing forward and back like a pendulum, with the heavy metal circle making a dull thud each time it landed on her chest.  With every impact I felt my head jerk backward, and I quickly discovered, to my relief, that my head rested in one of the gaps between the metal.  Still, being tossed up and down with her steps was a jarring and unpleasant experience even without the pain I would expect to go with it.

 After what seemed like several minutes Gina arrived at the bottom of the stairs, and the swaying became much less intense.  However, each of her long strides was now accompanied by a resonating click against the tile that seemed to pierce my ear canals.  I had no idea where Gina would even get high heels that fit her – someone of her stature had to be over size 30 – but somehow she had managed.  The incessant clicking came to a stop when she reached the door, with me high enough on her chest alone to look down at the top of the frame.

Gina’s strong arm pulled the door inward, and I realized I was not prepared for what was on the other side.  Four women, each taller than the door, stood on the front stoop, with what looked like their kid brothers in front of them.  I could only see even part of the faces of two of them: a striking, raven-haired woman on the left, and a golden-haired blond on the right, a bit shorter than the other.  Behind them I could see the strong, full chests of two others, one with chestnut hair and the other auburn.

“Don’t just stand there, come in!” Gina called, and they entered her house, ushering their diminutive companions ahead of them.  “Glad you could make it, Julie,” she said to the dark-haired one, “and you too, Ashley!”  It looked like their companions wanted to say something, but a quick shove from the girls moved them past Gina.  “And I knew you two would make it,” she addressed to the two bending almost in half to get through the door.  I recognized Kristie from when she nearly smashed me a couple days ago and figured the boy with her is the one she was nervous about asking out, but the redhead was completely unfamiliar to me.

“You know I wouldn’t miss this,” the auburn-haired woman replied.  Though she only came up to Gina’s chest, I had no doubt that to an average person she was absolutely towering.  “Gina and Shelby, best friends forever!”  Kristie walked past without saying anything, but Shelby decided to linger.  “That is an absolutely ravishing outfit, where did you find something like that in your size?”  Her emerald eyes were scanning along Gina’s neckline, and I became concerned about being noticed.

“I knew you’d like it,” Gina replied, causing my bones to rattle.  “I’ll tell you where I got it later though, I have something really important to show you first.”

Shelby looked like she was about to move on, but suddenly stopped, her eyes locked onto me.  “And that pendant,” she began, “is just so you.”  She stood on her toes and leaned inward, her angular face growing to fill my entire field of view.  Her rounded nose tilted down and she shifted a little, centering me between her brilliant green eyes.  I could feel her hot breath as it exited her nose and ran up Gina’s chest, causing me to shiver.  Each follicle of her immaculately maintained eyebrows was visible, and nearly in reach of my hands if they weren’t restrained.  Finally she whispered, “Is it real?”

Gina placed a gigantic hand on Shelby’s forehead and gently pushed her away.  “It’s like you don’t want any surprises tonight,” she pouted, giving Shelby a light shove.  “The sooner you head upstairs the sooner we can get started, and you’ll have your answers.”  That was all Shelby needed to hear.  In an instant she was running up the stairs, practically dragging her poor date after her.

I expected Gina to say something snarky to me, but she must have been eager to get started as well.  Her slow, ponderous steps ensured I would feel the full force of each swing of the medallion, with a strong jolt each time it bumped against her chest.  The trip back up the stairs was particularly brutal, and were it not for the otherworldly chains holding me in the center of the pentagram I would have plunged into her cleavage to suffocate.  Fortunately she took the stairs three or four at a time, and the ride was mercifully short.

When Gina got to the top of the stairs the gathering of her friends and their dwarfish companions had already made it into her room, but none of them were paying any attention to the terrarium with nearly a score of shrunken people trapped inside.  Instead they were walking throughout the place, investigating the candelabras and talismans Gina had set up.  Before long, though, they all made their way to the black rug Gina had laid out beside her bed with a pentagram hand-stitched into it.

“Um, what’s this?” one of the booming voices, I think Julie’s asked.  They puzzled over it for a few more moments while Gina walked past them to stand on the point nearest the wall.

“That is the main attraction for tonight,” Gina answered, pausing for emphasis after the first word.  “All of you take a seat at one of the points.”  None of them seemed to know exactly what to do, so Gina elaborated.  “It’ll be best if Julie and Ashley sit next to me, with Shelby and Kristie on the far points due to overlapping fields.”  Either they knew what that meant or they knew better than to question Gina, since a few seconds later they were all sitting in their indicated spots.

“Now, have your dates sit in front of you, close to the middle.”  They seemed less enthusiastic to obey Gina’s commands, but all it took was a gentle look or sharp tug from their dates for them to fall into line.  All of them exchanged uneasy looks; it didn’t appear that they had any more idea of what was going on than I did.

“Hey, wait a sec,” Julie began.  “Where’s your date, Gina?”  She leaned in, looking smug.

“Yeah!” Kristie chimed in.  “Haven’t you had a boyfriend for, like, years, and you’ve never let us meet him?”

Gina pinched the pendant’s chain just above its clasp and lifted it off her chest.  “Actually Kristie, you have met him,” she said, holding the pendant away from her.  “All of you have.  I understand if you didn’t notice though, he has a tendency to… get lost underfoot.”  With that phrase the chains holding me disappeared and I fell downward.  I landed on the soft cushion of her breasts, then sprung off.  Briefly I tumbled through the air, my view rapidly shifting between the floor and faces of eager giantesses watching me helplessly plummet to the ground until I landed on my back. 

Above me Gina stretched up and around me like a tremendous in-situ sculpture, her shins like massive, tumbled columns blocking me from her contemptuous gaze while her hands rested lightly on her knees.  I was slow getting to my feet, but when I did I was surprised to see that I was the center of attention for four gigantic women.  While they were in apparent shock, I decided to finally have a look at them, too.

Julie sat to my immediate left, looking at me with shock in her big, brown eyes.  Shadows from the candles gave her pale skin some needed color, and I could tell that her thin, pink lips were barely being held together in surprise.  Her eyes were set a little wide, but the overall breadth of her face and sharp chin made her look exotic instead of weird.  She wore a simple, purple V-neck shirt and a tiny pair of khaki shorts, with blue Sketchers I could just see socks peeking out of.

Past her was Shelby, whom I was already acquainted with, for lack of a better word.  In contrast with Julie’s surprise, Shelby seemed overjoyed, almost elated, to have a tiny man drop on the floor in her presence.  Her full lips were pulled up on one side in a smirk, and the light complemented her dark skin.  A lock of auburn hair fell over her eyes when she leaned forward for a better look, coming to rest on the orange letters on her shirt, pulled tight across her chest.  Dark blue skinny jeans hugged her hips, and I could just see brown and black sneakers poking out from behind her companion.

Kristie sat beside her, studying me intently with her dark, voluminous eyes.  Her brow furrowed, making some creases appear across the fair skin of her forehead while she idly chewed on her lip.  She wasn’t quite as built as Shelby, but I could tell from the plainly visible lean muscles that she had a strength as well as a size advantage over the other two.  A plain white cotton tank top, at least one size too small, clung to her chest, and black leggings struggled to stay together over her legs, with gray New Balance shoes large enough for me to live in capping off the outfit.

Lastly, directly across from Julie was Ashley.  She had covered her mouth with long, dainty fingers so I couldn’t read her reaction too well, but in her cold blue eyes I saw what might be excitement upon seeing me.  Though the candles didn’t play well with her porcelain skin I could tell that she, like the others, was quite pretty, and would probably catch my eye even if she weren’t the size of a building.  Since she was just on the upper edge of what would normally be possible she had been able to squeeze into some more standard clothes – a ruddy red T-shirt with white accents, and a pair of black shorts that covered her crotch and butt and not much else, with a pair of black and white Adidas on her feet.

“Is this the surprise?” Julie asked, finally breaking the silence.  One of her hands crept toward me, fingers coiled and ready to strike.  “Can I pick him up?”

Gina reached out and grabbed Julie’s wrist, dragging it to the floor long before it could get to me.  “I’m getting to that, dear,” she said through clenched teeth, “just wait a few more minutes.”  She let go of Julie’s wrist, but before she could bring it back to her lap she wrapped her gargantuan fingers around Julie’s slender hand.  I looked to the other side and saw that she had already taken Ashley’s hand in hers as well.

“Go on, join hands and hold them tight,” Gina bade her friends, and waited for them to form a continuous chain with each other.  “Now repeat after me.  You won’t know the words, but just say what I do confidently and everything will be fine.  Oh, I almost forgot, close your eyes.”  She waited for them to what she said, then took a deep breath and began.

Gina’s chanting sounded like she was speaking a foreign language backward, similar to when she had performed the blood ritual yesterday.  Her rumbling voice made it sound especially sinister, only to be outdone by the chorus of voices repeating every eight syllables loud enough that the ground quaked from the sound alone.  As the ritual progressed a sinister red light shone up from the rug, and Gina’s pendant began to levitate from her chest.  The red light grew stronger until everyone was bathed in it, and shocks of electricity ran between the hands of each woman.  They became louder until their chanting was more of a deafening boom, and the light was bright as day.  Electricity arced between all of the girls matching the design on the floor, and in an instant everything grew larger.  I felt myself blacking out as everything exploded in size, and the last thing I saw was Julie, larger than a mountain, a brilliant blue light shining from behind her closed eyelids.

Gina’s magic saturated my being, and images rapidly flashed through my brain.  I clutched my head, unable to focus on anything except the new energy that had entered me.  With great effort I managed to get my breathing under control, and soon after the visions began to coalesce into separate coherent narratives.

I found myself in the middle of an open room with nothing around me except a bare hard wood floor and a couch pressed up against the wall.  Before I could move however the ground shook, accompanied by a tremendous boom, then another.  Footsteps.  Julie walked in through the open door, scanning the floor for something.  In an instant she coiled her leg and brought it down, then ground her toe into the floor, pulverizing someone I didn’t even know was there.  Quickly I made a dash for the couch, but the force of her voice alone knocked me from my feet.  “Thought you could hide from me, did you?” she bellowed, ending with a laugh.  I scrambled to get back to my feet, but in just two steps she was atop me.  Helplessly I looked up at the tremendous field of white squares growing larger until I was sure I’d be able to fit inside one.  With the dull thud of pressure she brought her foot down, and I found myself in another sequence.

My hair whipped back while I raced down a tremendous plastic slide, large white stones sliding along with me.  A sea of rough, off-yellow platforms poured in front of me, and I was being carried along with it.  When I got closer I saw that they were pooling inside an enormous reservoir, each one hitting with a light crack.  Finally I also fell out of the slide, landing hard in the pool while the white stones clattered down around me.  The slide dropped, and I saw a pair of green eyes the size of houses.  “That’s a weird looking chip,” Shelby’s voice rumbled, shaking the tortilla chip bed I was on.  With impossible speed her hand was upon me, and I was pinched between her fingers.  There wasn’t even time to feel sick while she drew me to her face so that her hungry eyes could study me.  “I wonder how it tastes.”  Her voice was more like a constant low vibration, and before I could scream I was already between her lips. 

Everything was dark, but the cool air felt nice on my skin.  After some careful probing with my hands I found a solid surface, smooth and cold to the touch.  Not seeing anything else to do I leaned up against it and sank to the floor.  No sooner had my butt hit the ground, though, than everything around me began to rattle.  They were rhythmic vibrations, about two every second, and shook the ground as well as all of the unseen objects – apparently made of metal and glass – around me.  Then there was a loud click, and light flooded over me.  I spun, and saw through a clear glass jar distorting an enormous brown eye so that it seemed about to engulf me.  An enormous hand grabbed the jar by the lid and yanked it away, leaving nothing between me and Kristie.  Her face immediately turned to disgust.  “Ew, gross.  Ants in the cupboard,” she muttered, her voice paralyzing me.  I watched powerlessly while she raised her hand up, then brought it down, slapping me with the middle of her palm.

I sat alone on an immense, soft brown plain, with rolling hills to either side of me.  After a moment I realized that I was on one of the peaks as well, with the valleys coming to small, circular points, and a tremendous brown wall rising behind me.  A shadow fell over me and I turned to see a colossal bare shin, the bulge of a knee just barely visible while looking forward.  Nervously I craned my neck back along a skyscraper of a woman standing over me, hands strategically placed on her hips in an imposing silhouette.  “Hey little guy,” a voice thundered from the sky, “You’re barely using that seat, so how about you move over to make room for me?”  I started running to the side, but barely made any progress before Ashley spoke again.  “Oh, I get it.  You want a cute girl to sit on your lap.  You’re lucky you’re cute too.”  Quickly she spun around and began to sit.  While her magnificent ass drew nearer I tried to speed up but it was no use.  Ashley’s titanic butt smashed into me, driving me into the seat.

Next I found myself standing atop a broad, flat plane, with a single divot dug out of it and filled with gold ribbon.  The cacophony of someone clearing their throat boomed from behind me, and I spun to see cold blue eyes staring at me surrounded by olive skin with dark red bangs hanging just below her eyebrows.  “You could have avoided this,” she rumbled, setting a hand down next to me with a gargantuan thud that knocked me off my feet.  “Even though you tried to break up with me, and at prom of all places, I still cared for you.”  Fulda covered me with the pad of her index finger’s tip, the closest she could come to gently stroking me.  “I would have brought you with me to college, and we would’ve been inseparable.  But then you cheated on me at the first opportunity, and… well, you had to learn what happens.”  The pressure from her finger increased.  “Be seeing you soon, squirt.”  She pressed hard, squishing me effortlessly.

Finally I stood eye to eye with Gina, the tallest I had ever been compared to her.  She looked at me and chortled, effortlessly growing half a foot.  Gina’s hands clapped onto my shoulders, holding me firmly in place while she leaned down until our noses touched.  “Why are you so small?” she whispered, and as though on cue she shot up another foot.  Her grip tightened, and again she asked, “Why are you so small?”  Again she grew, and my feet lifted off the ground.  While my feet dangled helplessly she pressed, “You’re just so, so very small.”  Gina shot up more until she could easily hold me with one hand.  “It’s pathetic how small you are, really.”  This time she grew until her hand had completely engulfed me, leaving only my head exposed.  “If I were small like you, I’d beg someone like me to crush me.”  Gina’s growth continued until I was completely inside her fist.  “Is that what you want, you tiny little bug?”  She opened fist, and I saw the enormous plane of her palm expand exponentially in every direction.  “I bet it is.  I bet the thought of a gigantic woman like me snuffing out your insignificant life excites you, maybe even arouses you, doesn’t it?”  Gina grew until I could no longer see her over the creases of her palm.  “We’ll see if you’re that lucky.”  She grew to encompass everything, and I knew that, for all practical reasons, I had ceased to exist for her.

Groggily I awoke from my visions and looked around.  Much to my relief I hadn’t shrunk to infinitesimal size as a result of whatever Gina had done.  Everything seemed to have returned to how it was before the ritual, in fact.  Soft candlelight played off the faces of the giantesses arrayed around the pentagram while they looked intently toward the center.  The chanting had stopped too, and I wondered just what Gina had intended with this whole set-up.  That’s when I realized four people had gone missing.

A soft high-pitched squealing reached me from the center of the pentagram, and I realized what they were looking at now.  The squealing morphed into incoherent screams, though I couldn’t tell if they were from confusion, surprise, or fear. 

“It’s time,” Gina bellowed, making me jump.  “You have been brought here to be part of the ritual, and now you must prove yourself worthy of the gift.”  I knew where this was going and could do nothing to stop it.  “Look at the man in front of you.   He’s so tiny.  Small.  Pathetic.  We made him that way, with our power.  Now it’s time to unleash your inner giantess.”

Shelby’s arm was in motion before Gina had even stopped talking, her face a mask of grotesque mania.  “Shelby, no!” the man in front of her squeaked, but if he had anything else to say it was drowned out by the deafening clap of her palm striking the ground.  She slapped the same spot a couple times for good measure, making sure he was completely pulverized before sitting back upright.

The next to move was Julie, who snatched up the man in front of her with a lightning-quick swipe.  “Julie, please!” his tiny voice pleaded while she held him in the middle of her palm.  “We’ve been together for six months!  We were going to go to college together!  Please don’t-“  In one motion Julie brought her fingers in, forming a fist around her boyfriend.  There was a light crunch when his bones gave way to her trip in a single instant, then she wiped the small red stain on the rug.

Ashley had the sole of her shoe leaning over her shrunken man while he was on his knees, begging.  “But you can’t!” he cried.  “We’ve been friends since kindergarten!  You said we were soulmates!  I’ve never-“

“Yeah, but you’ve been really annoying me lately,” Ashley broke in lackadaisically.  “Specifically, the last fifteen seconds.    Bye, boy.”  Her shoe swung down, and in an instant she had flattened her boyfriend to paste.

All eyes turned to Kristie, who was looking back at the group nervously.  “Well?” Gina asked.  “We’re waiting.”

Nervously Kristie looked at the tiny boy in front of her, who I could hear screaming for her not to kill him.  “See, the thing is,” she began, “I actually really like Alex.  We just started dating, and I kinda want to see where this goes.”

“Kristie.”  Gina practically used her name as a bullet.  “Don’t you think it’s odd that you’re almost three feet taller than all your family members?”  Kristie stammered, so Gina continued.  “And didn’t you find it weird you had such a massive growth spurt in one night?  I made you a giantess, it’s time for you to act like one.”

Kristie looked at Alex on the ground in front of her, still imploring her to spare him.  She raised a hand and began bringing it forward, but stopped when he raised his arms and flinched away from her.  “I… I can’t,” she admitted.  “I don’t want to smash him.”

“I can,” Shelby declared, and with a single swipe she had scooped him up into her hand.  His pleas turned to panicked screams when she opened her hand with him next to her mouth.  Unfazed, her tongue flicked out, striking Alex in the chest and knocking him down.  The manic glee returned to her face, and her fingers began to close in.

“Hold up,” Gina said, causing Shelby to stop mid-crush.  “We’ve all already crushed someone – except for Kristie, an impostor giantess.”

“What about you?” Julie asked.

“Hmm?”

“Yeah, you didn’t crush your tiny man,” Ashley chimed in.  “How do we know you’re not a fake giantess, too?”

Gina sighed.  “I’m the one who- you know what, no.  I’ve been shrinking and crushing dweebs at school for years.  Or have you never wondered why there are so many missing persons around here?  They went ‘missing’ under my shoe.”  She paused and let them mull it over.  “Besides, I’m the one who made all of you giantesses.  So chill.”

Julie and Ashley seemed placated by this.  “Can you… make me more of a giantess?” Julie asked.

Gina smirked.  “Maybe.  But first we have two tiny men here to play with, and the night is still young.” 

Everyone fell quiet and looked at Gina in anticipation.  The only sound was a muffled squeak emanating from inside Shelby’s raised fist.  Though I was glad to no longer be the center of attention I knew it would be short-lived, and once Gina shared her plan my night would somehow get even worse.

“As you can see,” Gina began, “thanks to Kristie’s lack of resolve we have two tiny men at our disposal instead of only one as I had expected.”  She took a moment to glare at the brunette before continuing.  “I think we should play a game with them.  We each come up with a task for them to do with us, and whichever one does better gets your vote.  The one with more votes at the end gets to live!”

“Gina, that’s barbaric!” Kristie objected.

“I don’t remember asking you,” my captor shot back.  “You’re only being allowed to play because we need an odd number of people, but if you have a particularly good challenge I might let you keep your extra height.”  Shelby lowered her hand to the ground and uncurled her fingers, allowing her captive to roll onto the floor in front of her.  Gina waited for him to stand back up, then turned to face Julie.  “Whenever you’re ready, you’re up.”

The raven-haired titaness unfolded her legs, then slammed a foot down mere inches from me with a tremendous crash.  While I staggered from the ground shuddering beneath her foot she stood all the way up.  I looked up at her towering over me, legs alone hundreds of feet tall, while she crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at us.  “You both look so small down there,” Julie boomed.  “I can barely even see you, and with so many of us beautiful giantesses around it’s only a matter of time until one of us steps on you.  Why don’t you climb up into my pockets for safe keeping?”  She winked, and I figured that was the signal to start.

I sprinted toward the striped white wall that ran along the base of the enormous blue Sketcher in front of me.  When I was close enough to look straight up at the toe I leapt up, planting my toes in the narrow ridges in the rubber and grabbing onto the lip of the rubber above.  Quickly I scrambled up the side until I stood looking over the great dark blue expanse before me.   Without wasting a second I dashed forward, springing off the bottom lace and scrambling up the rest of the intertwined shoe lace until I stood on the shoe’s tongue, looking up at the sheer cliff face of her shin.

A quick glance back revealed that my competition was just barely cresting her toe, but I was never one to rest on my laurels, especially when life was on the line.  I hopped off the top of Julie’s shoe and partially wrapped myself around her shin bone as though I were climbing a thick, incredibly smooth tree trunk.  Years of practice had helped me perfect this technique, and soon enough I was steadily shimmying up her shin.  When I was about a foot up I glanced back at my opponent and saw him futilely trying to grab hold of the silky skin at the base of Julie’s ankle, wasting his energy jumping up to no gain.

I continued upward at my steady pace, keeping my eyes upward so I wouldn’t lose focus.  When I was nearly at Julie’s knee her inescapably dark eyes peeked over to check on our progress.  “It looks like one of you has quite a lead,” she boomed.  “Let’s say we even that out, hmm?”  Her foot lifted from the ground, and the great trunk swayed sharply to my right.  She passed it over her other leg and I gripped as tightly to the shin as I could.

Julie slammed the toe of her shoe into the ground, sending a violent tremor up the length of her leg.  Before the vibrations could subside she hit it again, causing me to stop in my tracks while waiting for this to pass.  Once more she hit her toe against the ground, and the shockwaves overwhelmed my fingers.  My hands slipped from her smooth skin and I doubled over backward, barely clinging to the bone with my thighs.  I struggled to get my arms back on Julie’s leg, but with the inverse angle it was nearly impossible.

Before I dropped Julie lifted her foot again and swung it back over her planted leg.  She must have made a big show of it, going so far as to point her toe outward during the big sweep.  It was enough to help me recover, and my back straightened while I was thrown back against her shin.  The impact rattled my ribs but I managed to get a snug hold with my arms and scarcely even noticed when she set her foot back down.  For a second I stayed still, catching my breath and getting ready to move in case of another attempt to throw me off.

“Wow, you’re really tenacious!” Julie exclaimed, evidently surprised that I had managed to hold on.  “So is poor Alex, but I don’t think he’s ever going to get up past my ankle.”  Booming giggles came from around the circle, and I was glad to not be the butt of the joke for once.

In a few more minutes I reached Julie’s knee, and the loose skin provided ample hand and foot holds for me to continue my climb.  Before I could continue onto her thigh, though, the titaness’s voice rang out again.  “I think it’s clear who wins the climbing contest,” she declared, “but just for fun I’m going to even the playing field.”  Rapidly her body dropped to the ground, and the skin beneath me became taut.  A light tremor ran up her thigh when she sat down, then I watched her lay back on the floor.

“Well?” Julie beckoned.  “My pockets still don’t have any tiny men in them.”  With the race still on I sat on the edge of her kneecap, looking down at her long body sprawled out.  After taking a deep breath I pushed myself off and slid the length of her thigh, rapidly approaching the opening of her shorts that had slid up almost to her pelvis.  Before I slid into the khaki I brace my feet, and when they hit the rolled fabric I used them to swing up and stay on the outside of her shorts.  I landed harder than expected, and the breath rushed out of my lungs while I rolled along the fabric.

When I finally came to a stop I was out of breath, but Julie’s pocket was only a few inches away.  Desperately I crawled along the khaki, dragging myself forward by my forearms and weak kicks that I did my best to dig into the fabric.  “It’s close!” Julie called, just when my fingertips reached the outside flap of her pocket.  I grabbed onto the pocket’s outside, and with a surge of strength dragged myself along the last bit of her shorts.  During the pivot I gritted my teeth and focused, and was able to slide myself into Julie’s pocket smoothly.

“Aw, sorry Alex,” Julie purred, sliding her fingers into the pocket after me, “but Gina’s guy wanted it more than you.”  Gently her fingertips settled around me as though I were a prize in a claw game, and she slowly pulled me back into the dim light.  Her loose grip carried me over her chest, and she paused for a moment while I was over her breasts.  “I’d like to play with you a little more,” she purred, giving me an almost tender look, “but Shelby has you next.”  Julie’s arm continued its arc, and in a few seconds more she had released me at Shelby’s feet.

The auburn-haired giantess had removed her shoes while we scaled Julie, and she twiddled her toes through her socks at us while Julie’s hand pulled back.  “This must bring back memories for you, huh Alex?” she boomed, looking down at us scornfully.  “I’ve always enjoyed towering over you, and this just seems natural.”  Silence reigned while Shelby looked at us and licked her lips.  “Anyway, my challenge.  I’m going to try to step on you until I get tired of it, at which point I’ll declare a winner.  Good luck!”

Shelby’s foot started forward immediately, moving fairly slowly so as not to crush us.  While the enormous sock-clad foot drew toward us I dove to the left, just clearing the space before her foot set down with a dull thud.  Unfortunately I was still winded from the climb, and stumbled trying to get back up.  I tried to recover, but only succeeded in making even more of a spectacle on my way down.  Several steps later I toppled forward and landed on my face.

My struggle must have been quite a spectacle, since before I had even stopped skidding Shelby let out a delighted squeal.  In no time the cotton-covered monstrosity lifted up and slid across the rug.  I could scarcely even yelp before it was upon me, and then the tremendous white wall collapsed.  It didn’t feel as though Shelby was trying to crush me, but the weight of her foot alone made it impossible for me to move.  All I could do was hold my breath and wait for this excessive tagging to be over.

Finally she lifted her foot off me and I was free to move again.  Immediately I started running away from Shelby, while she swung her foot around to hit the other target.  The ground shuddered when she set her heel down, and my competition disappeared beneath her foot soon after.  I couldn’t spend time worrying about him, though, and focused on getting as far away from Shelby as I could.

“Hey, get back here!” the giantess boomed, and a second later there was an insurmountable wall of white in front of me.  The taut white fabric followed the gentle curve of her foot through the bulge of her heel, and I ran headlong into it.  I was still embedded in the soft skin when she brought it down, trapping me under the ball of her foot.  She wiggled her toes in excitement, letting me feel each subtle muscle twitch above me.

The pressure increased, and Shelby began dragging her foot along the floor, taking me with it.  I pressed hard, trying to get out from under it, but it was no use.  Each bump on the rug was painfully clear when she dragged me over it thanks to her tremendous mass pressing on me, and my struggles only made the situation worse.  Finally I gave up and submitted to the ride, knowing there was nothing I could do to escape.

After what seemed like several minutes she finally moved her foot off me, letting fresh air rush into my lungs.  While I struggled to my feet she took a lazy step toward my opponent, which he easily avoided by walking backward.  I wasn’t even fully composed yet when her foot came back my way, hitting me in the side and bowling me over while it passed.

Shelby put her hands on her knees and leaned over to get a good look at me.  I groaned and looked at her looming over my prone form, a mean grin on her face.  “You’re really bad at this,” she taunted, then laughed.  “It’s almost like you want to get stepped on.  How you survived all this time with Gina I have no idea, I would’ve crushed you within minutes.”  Then she stood up and addressed the others.  “Alex wins this one, he’s much more feisty.”

With her foot Shelby ushered us toward the brunette to her left, nudging me forward with her big toe.  In no time we were standing in front of Kristie, who sat cross-legged on her corner of the rug.  She looked at each of us in turn, then cleared her throat.  “My contest is much easier,” she declared.  “If your name is Alex and you came with me to Gina’s house tonight, you get my vote.”

“Oh, come on!” Julie protested, leaning toward Kristie.  “That’s such a lame contest!”

“Yeah!” Ashley joined in.  “That’s not even any fun to watch!”

“Well it’s my turn, so I get to decide,” Kristie shot back.  “But please, let us see your brilliant idea, Ashley.”

“My pleasure,” Ashley replied, bringing herself up to a squat.  “Get over here you little twerps and get ready for some fun.”  I hurried over to stand in front of Ashley’s back and white Adidas, eager for whatever her task was.  At this point I had to beat Alex.  I hadn’t spent over half a decade as Gina’s plaything only for it to end because she wanted to have a sleepover with her friends.

We stood at the toes of Ashley’s shoes while she gazed down at us from between her thighs.  “You’re both just so cute!” she began, squinting with her light blue eyes.  “Why don’t you go around back, grab onto my ass, and then we’ll see where to go.”  I didn’t need to be told twice.  Before she even finished speaking I pushed off the white leather of her shoe and ran along her insole to where I saw her plump rear nearly touching the ground already.

I went to the lowest point, where her juicy butt was only an inch or two from the ground, and couldn’t help but admire what I saw.  The tiny black shorts were practically painted onto Ashley’s immaculate ass, to the point where they were pulled against the inside of each cheek as well.  This was not so much a body part as it was a work of art, heart-shaped and almost perfectly round, dangling just out of arm’s reach.

There was no more time to waste.  I raised up my arms to gauge the distance of how far above me her butt was and prepared myself for the jump.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Alex frantically leaping up, trying but failing to grab hold of Ashley’s shorts.  Carefully I squatted down while looking up and jumped, reaching as far up as my arms could go.  My fingertips brushed the curvature of Ashley’s butt, but not long enough to get a firm hold, and I landed back on the rug.

Undeterred I tried again, coiling myself up as much as possible.  I swung my arms to loosen them, and took several deep breaths to steady myself.  When I felt ready I sprung up again, extending my arms as far as they could go.  One of my hands found purchase, and my fingers slipped into some loose stitching in the fabric.  Using that as a handhold I brought my other arm up and found a solid thread to grab onto with it.  Finally I swung my legs up so that I could work my feet into the elastic shorts fabric, supported by the thick buttock behind it.

I held the position for several minutes, preparing for whatever challenge Ashley had for us while Alex tried ineffectually to grab onto her butt.  In retrospect, I had spent years playing Gina’s games and had plenty of time to condition myself for them, while he probably had not even picked up a weight in his entire life.  His continued flailing only reinforced that he was a complete stranger to physical activity while I remained firmly attached to the perfect ass.

“Ugh, this must be so embarrassing for you,” Ashley finally said, exasperated.  “Can’t even grab onto something that’s right above you.”  Her hand reached around and probed her butt cheek for a moment before finding me.  Gingerly she seized me on both sides with her fingers and pulled me off her shorts, then brought me around to the front in a whirl of color and nausea.  “Congratulations, Gina’s guy,” she declared, “you’re much less pathetic than he is.”  Her vote cast, she reached forward and set me in front of Gina, still sitting cross-legged on her pentagram point.

Gina looked at both of us, her clear blue eyes glimmering in the candle light.  “So, it comes down to me,” she boomed jovially.  “I’m sure you expect some physical challenge like the more fun giantesses put you through, but I’m gonna do something different: trivia, best out of five.  And it’s about my favorite topic, me!”  I groaned inwardly.  This could easily be a set-up for her to fuck me over.  “First question: Who are my two sisters?”

“Fulda and Jessica,” I quickly shouted while Alex was still trying to remember whether Gina even had sisters.

“Very good!  And what was the last class any of us had together?”

This was unfair, we’d never had a class together.  “Physics I, last year,” Alex confidently offered.  “You sat in front of me and blocked my view of the board.”

“A little more editorializing than I’d like, but yes,” Gina replied.  “Now, do either of you know what size shoe I wear?”

“Twenty-two?” Alex offered, clearly not confident in his answer.

“Thirty-eight and a half,” I said before she could shoot down his answer.

“You were closest without going over,” Gina told me.  “I’m up to forty now.  So, can either of you tell me who I eat lunch with?”

“Shelby and Kristie!” Alex shouted before I even realized I had no idea.

“Yeah, though that might be changing soon,” she said, casting a glare up at Kristie.  “Okay, last question: Why are you so smaaaaalllll?”

“Um.  Because you shrank me?” Alex offered, but from how Gina clicked her tongue I knew that was wrong.

“We’re small because you’re big,” I began.  “If we weren’t small you’d be bored and have nothing to do, so we have to be small so that you’ll have something to play with.  Our size makes us the perfect toys for you, so it can be no different.”

Gina smirked.  “I’ve taught you so well,” she said, then looked to Alex.  “Unfortunately, your simplistic answer is wrong.  You’re tiny because you deserve to be, and we need someone to tower over.  Now, I think the promise was that the winner got to live?”  She spread her fingers over the defeated shrunken man and let her hand hover over him, letting suspense build.

“Gina, wait,” Shelby burst in.  Gina stayed her hand, letting Shelby speak her piece.  “You know that I’ve always wanted a boyfriend that could fit in my shoe, right?”  Gina nodded.  “I think Alex would be perfect for that.”

“But Alex is my boyfriend!” Kristie objected.

“Not anymore,” Shelby replied.  “A tiny man like him needs to be in the shadow of a real giantess, you’re an impostor at best.”

“Shelby’s right,” Gina said, lowering her hand onto Alex.  She carefully plucked him up with two fingers, then held him out to Shelby.  “He needs a strong giantess to help adjust to the life of a shrunken person, and I can think of no better than you.”  Shelby gleefully accepted the tiny man dropped into her hands, then pulled him back to her chest.

“But this isn’t-“

“Hey there!” Shelby said, ignoring Kristie’s protest.  “Oh, don’t look so surprised.  I’ve always had a thing for you, actually.  So small and weak.”  She stroked him with a fingertip, driving him back to the wall of fingers holding him on her palm.  “This was inevitable from the first time you looked up at me while I sat on your chest.” 

“So, what now?” Julie asked after a few moments of quiet.

Gina pondered for a second.  “Well, it’s not even midnight yet,” she said.  “We have at least one tiny man we can play with, and some unfinished business.”  She paused to glance at Kristie.

“Sounds good to me,” Julie replied, “but aren’t you worried about us hurting him?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” Gina answered.  “I saw to that back when I did the ritual.”  She gave a sly grin down at me.  “Let’s take turns, but it’s first come, first serve!”  All the giantesses looked at each other balefully while I nervously gulped.

The stand-off continued with Ashley and Julie staring each other down, waiting for the other to make the first move.  From her barely audible cooing I could tell Shelby was occupied with her new tiny “boyfriend” while Kristie plead in vain to get him back.  Gina had laid back, content to simply watch this unfold as though she were evaluating her friends. 

Simultaneously Ashley’s and Julie’s hands shot forward, each trying to snatch me.  Their hands met over me, causing me to flinch away from the enormous crack of their knuckles coming together.  They pushed against each other, one trying to overpower the other, slapping fingers away between attempts to pluck me from the ground.  Finally, after a particularly hard slap, one of the hands was thrown free long enough for the other to clamp around me.  In this fleshy cocoon I was dragged along the carpet, my stomach struggling to stay in place against the extreme acceleration.

When the fingers unfurled I was just inches away from the tip of a porcelain nose, with a bright blue eye staring at me from either side.  “Hey there, cutie!” Ashley exclaimed loud enough I winced and had to cover my ears.  When I could open my eyes again I saw that her free index finger was uncomfortably close, with her smiling beyond it.  “Aw, did I hurt you?  I didn’t mean to.”  She hit me with her fingertip in an awkward attempt to stroke me that only knocked me backward.  “And I promise I’ll never do it again.”

Ashley’s finger jabbed me again, driving me further back into her palm.  She pursued and I stepped to the side, just avoiding another drill from her finger.  As soon as she realized she missed, though, she swept her finger to the side, slamming it into me and knocking me over.  I rolled a couple times before she set the whorled ceiling down to stop me.  Her finger pushed me around on her skin, with the occasional reprieve so she could jab me again.

After several minutes of battery by her fingers she stopped and set her finger down beside me.  Before I could even breathe her thumb was on my back, and I quickly found myself pinched in her grip.  Ashley raised me to her eye so she could look me over, and I squirmed to get out of her grip.  She giggled, shaking the strong foundation holding me, then placed a fingertip over my body, blocking my view and causing me to go still.

“You tried so hard to ride my butt earlier,” Ashley said, causing my bones to chatter, “and that other twerp robbed you of the opportunity.  I think you should be rewarded for your effort, don’t you?”  I had no illusions about this being a reward rather than a thinly-veiled excuse to menace me some more, but I had learned long ago that no matter what I said it didn’t matter.  Instead I simply nodded so she could get on with her torment.

Ashley moved me away from her face and down her body, pressing me hard enough into her chest while I went past that I could feel her hard nipple beneath.  Past her breasts she began moving me to the side, sliding me around her waist.  She brought me to a stop at the small of her back, with me facing down, her butt cleft by tight shorts in plain view.  While I watched her other hand worked a finger into the waistband, then pulled it open like a tent.  I squirmed and tried to get free, but her two fingers held me firm.

Without warning she released me, sending me into a brief freefall that was almost immediately arrested by the elastic shorts straining around her behind.  She released the opening above me, plunging me into darkness with a resounding clap of the fabric against her skin.  I tried to wiggle but couldn’t.  Between the tiny shorts pulled taut around me and the cotton panties secured around her butt I was practically sealed in place.  The only mercy was the significant meat of her buttock, which gave me some measure of cushion against the crushing spandex.

In such a confining space I was formed to the gentle contour of Ashley’s ass.  I felt each minute twitch shift my body along the great mound of flesh, and a sense of vertigo while she spun around.  Every movement she made caused her butt to shift, and I was compelled to move along with it.  It certainly didn’t help that every time the spandex readjusted it got a little bit tighter, forming more tightly to my body and making it harder to breathe.

Slowly I felt Ashley’s butt lower while the spandex drew even tighter around me.  I tried to scream while I was pressed further into the supple flesh behind me, but found I was muffled by the fabric over me.  I tried to push against it while getting wracked with pain, but found that my arms were completely restrained as well.  Frantically I struggled to get free, but the taut spandex held me perfectly still in the indentation on Ashley’s buttock.

“Wow, I can see his outline!” said a massive, astonished voice from outside my void of pain.  I hadn’t even considered that the fabric was so tight I could be visible on the outside.  A huge force pressed against me, pushing me even further into the ample skin and muscle.  Absent anything else to do I gritted my teeth against the pain, hoping only to endure it until it ended.  The immense pressure should have crushed me right when it began, but she kept pressing harder and somehow I remained intact.  Tears welled in my eyes while she jammed her finger even harder against me, but release never came.

After what seemed like hours of torment the finger retreated, finally relieving the pressure.  Before I could even readjust to just the constricting spandex, however, light flooded into my prison when several fingers pierced Ashley’s waistband.  The giantess jerked away, yanking the shorts down even more as the fingers held their grip.  I briefly remained stuck on her panties from the intensity with which I had been forced against them, but that bond broke and I fell from Ashley’s butt.  I bounced on the seat of her spandex and got thrown against her thigh, then tumbled down the length of her leg until I ramped off her calf and landed beside her shoe on the carpet.

Spandex slapping against skin snapped me out of my daze, just in time for the rumbling of two enormous earthquakes from Ashley’s behemoth feet setting down.  “What the fuck are you doing?” she shouted, loud enough to make my ears ring.

“Come on, you’ve had him for like twenty minutes!” Julie replied.  She was on her hands and knees, frantically looking around Ashley’s feet for me.  I stepped behind the heel of Ashley’s Adidas, hoping they would hide me from the eager giantess’s gaze.  “It’s my turn to play with him.”

“If you’d asked, I would’ve given him to you!” Ashley replied, sliding her foot forward and leaving me exposed.  “But since you tried to grab him out of my shorts I think I’ll hold onto him a little longer.”

Julie finally spotted me cowering behind Ashley’s shoe and grinned.  “You can’t keep him from me!” she declared and lunged forward.  Ashley deflected her wrist with her ankle, sending the hand wide before setting her foot back down.  Her toe was directly in front of me, and I looked up to see the concentric circles of her sole above me.  Unaware of my presence she began bringing her heel down, and I reflexively jumped to the side.  The enormous shoe set down just behind me with a crash, dropping me to my knees. 

Tenaciously Julie tried again, thrusting her other arm at me while I was helpless.  Ashley easily knocked her hand aside again so that it ran into her other shin, bringing the titaness down.  She fell forward, landing between Ashley’s legs with an earth-shaking thud.  Her shoulder had barely missed flattening me on the rug.  I looked to her face, and saw that, fortunately for me, her bangs had fallen over her eyes, obscuring her vision.  “Come on, just let me play with him!” she whined.  “I’ll give him back, I promise!”

“Not a chance.”  Ashley lifted her far foot and placed it on Julie’s back, holding her on the ground.  I ran around the curve of her heel and leaned against the white rubber, not wanting to get caught in any thrashing on Julie’s part.  “Maybe next time you’ll ask nicely first.”  Her voice was dripping with smugness while she asserted her dominance.

“Why don’t you leave him alone?” Kristie piped up.  “He’s not a toy, he’s a person!  Maybe he doesn’t want to play with any of you?”

“Oh, go fuck yourself, you sanctimonious bitch,” Julie spat back from her spot on the floor.

“Yeah, get back on your high horse and ride somewhere they care,” Ashley added.

Even Shelby took a break from fawning over her tiny boyfriend to pile on.  “You’re just upset because your date’s tiny and you’re trying to get him back.”

Two long, powerful fingers grabbed me, and for once I was relieved to be looking up at Gina.  “Girls, calm down!” she shouted over the din.  “If none of you are going to be civil, then none of you will get to play with him!”  She stood, pressing me into her open palm with the g-forces, then took two steps forward.  Over the edge of her hand I could just see the top of Kristie’s wispy brown hair, each strand clearly visible.  Gina was trying to intimidate her.  “Now, everyone gather around, we have some business to resolve.

It took a few moments for the others to disentangle themselves, but everyone was rallied around Gina in short order. “First, I have good news!  Shelby, due to your enthusiasm throughout the whole night you’ve proven yourself to be a true giantess, and I think you should have the stature to reflect it.”  The air hummed, and Shelby’s carpet of red hair quickly came into view.  It continued rising until she was almost equal with Gina, a titaness in her own right.  She looked down at me and winked, causing me to gulp.

“Next up is Julie!  The vigor with which you destroyed your tiny man tonight and pursued another marks you as truly worthy of greatness.  This has been a long time coming, but you’ve earned it.”  A curtain of tousled black hair appeared on my left and kept growing until Julie finally arrived at her titanic new stature.  She easily spotted me in Gina’s hand and grinned down at me.

“Ashley, it’s your turn!  I was impressed with how lackadaisically you dispatched your tiny earlier, and though I had some doubts about you during the contest you blew them away with how vigorously you played with him, and then defended him as your property.  No longer will you languish as the shortest of the tallest.”  Streaks of blond hair rose to my right, and sparkling blue eyes found me even before Ashley arrived at her new, immense height.  She gave me a quick wave, then turned her attention back to Gina.

“What about me?” Kristie asked.  The other girls were head and shoulders taller than her now, and she was understandably nervous.

“Yes, what about you, Kristie?” Gina replied mockingly.  “All night you’ve done nothing but embarrass yourself and me by fawning over your ‘boyfriend’ who isn’t even the size of your thumb anymore.  You don’t deserve to be a giantess, and I regret starting you on the path to begin.” 

“Gina, no!” she shouted, but the messy brown hair had already disappeared from my view.  I scrambled to the side and saw her still dwindling, looking up at everyone else in horror as they appeared to grow to enormous proportions in front of her, until she finally stopped, shorter than everyone else’s legs.  Kristie looked up pleadingly at the others, but only found stony faces.  She wanted to keep shouting, but was too dumbstruck to form words.

Everyone stared down at her in silence until Shelby finally said something.  “You know Gina,” she began, “Kristie saw things tonight.  Things that could get us sent to jail for a long time.  Are you really gonna let her walk out the door?”  Kristie looked up at the redhead, horrified.

Gina agreed.  “That’s a really good point, Shelby.  Look, Kristie, I know we’ve been friends for a while, and I hate to do this, but we’re just growing apart.”  She let her pun linger in the air before moving forward.  Kristie began dwindling again, much faster this time, while she looked at the others in shock.  Her pleas for Gina to stop were ignored the whole time, her voice getting higher and more pathetic until it was little more than a squeak.  When she finally stopped she was barely more than a speck on the floor, miniscule compared to the two shoes flanking her.

Shelby began to kneel over her newly-shrunken friend, but Gina quickly stopped it.  “I think that’s enough playing with tiny men for now,” she said.  The other girls were disappointed, but Gina ignored them.  She bent over and scooped up Kristie with her free hand.  “I need to get these two into their habitat so they can get some rest.”

“What about Alex?” Shelby asked, hopefully.

“Oh, he’s yours,” Gina answered.  “He’s your boyfriend, right?”  The red-haired giantess looked overjoyed, and returned to beaming at the tiny man held captive in her hand. 

With two more strides Gina arrived at the terrarium and easily opened the top hatch.  First she lowered Kristie in, gingerly setting her on the floor while she still looked around in terror.  Then she put me in, practically throwing me from her grip when I was near the floor.  When I came to a stop I saw that all of the inhabitants, including Kristie, were still staring at the glass wall between us and Gina’s room.

Four pairs of eyes were looking intently into the terrarium.  Kristie screamed, but no one seemed to pay her any mind.  All of the giantesses besides Gina looked at us with wonder, as though a whole new world had been opened up to them.  “Wow!” Julie exclaimed, pressing her nose against the glass.

“That’s so cool!” Ashley joined, trying to count the tiny people in front of her.  “Can I get one?”

Gina smirked.  “I can bring you one on Monday, don’t worry.”  Shelby tapped on the glass, shaking the pane and causing the people pressed against it to recoil away.  “Not only that,” Gina continued, “I can each you how to make your own.”  They devolved into incoherent excitement while Gina turned them away to do something else.

I dusted myself off and stood, but when I walked away I ran into a smooth, solid pole.  Surprised, I took a step back, and saw Roni looming over me, her firetruck red shorts far enough up I couldn’t reach them.  “Have fun tonight?” she asked.

“Yes, Ver-“

“High Priestess Veronica,” she corrected.  “That’s two.”

“Yes, High Priestess Veronica, I did,” I replied.

“Good.  I hope that being so close and seeing Her divine powers gave you some faith in our Goddess.”  Roni waited smugly for me to say something, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.  “That’s two, by the way.  If you disrespect me or another of the High Priestesses again there will be consequences, and the reading She gave us tonight opens a lot of possibilities.”

Roni placed her fingertips on my head.  “Come on, you’re in my room tonight.”

“What about her?” I asked, pointing at the still-shocked Kristie.

“She’ll be fine, it takes a few days for someone to adjust.  You’d know that if you ever talked to the newcomers.  Now let’s go.”  More forcefully she pressed on my head, pushing me toward the palace she lived in.  Roni walked ahead of me while I struggled to keep up with her long strides, and she led me to her room.

Carefully Roni untied her shoes and slipped them off, then dropped her shorts.  She grabbed the covers and slid beneath them, quickly finding a groove right in the middle.  I grabbed the covers to join her, but she stopped me with a large hand on my chest.  “The fuck you think you’re doing?” she asked, then pointed at the foot of the bed.  “You’re lucky I’m feeling generous and I’ll let that one slide.  Go lie at by my feet like a dog.”  Roni pulled the covers up to her shoulders while I walked along the bed and climbed up, then curled up on top of the comforter.  It was hard to get comfortable with her feet beneath me, and I hardly tried.

Roni drifted off to sleep, but I didn’t even try.  I laid awake trying to process everything that had happened, and knew that I wouldn’t last much longer.  I had to escape soon, and for good.

Only a couple minutes after the lights went out Roni had drifted off to sleep, as evidenced by the slow, steady rhythm of her breath.  Alone with my thoughts, I only became more resolute in my plan, what little of a plan there was.  I had to get out of this cage and away from Gina at all costs before the psychotic girl or one of her friends killed me.

I waited a few minutes after Roni drifted off to sleep so that I wouldn’t jolt her awake before making my move.  Slowly I crawled across the edge of her bed, careful not to bump her feet while I passed over them.  When I reached the side I inched my legs over until they came to rest upon the sideboard and sat there a moment, making sure I was still undetected.  Roni remained still, so I carefully pushed off from the bed and lowered myself to the ground without a noise.

The room was nearly pitch black and my eyes still hadn’t adjusted, so I had to feel my way to the door.  I placed a hand on the bed’s sideboard and walked along to the edge, where I slowly turned, making sure I stayed in contact with the foot of Roni’s bed.  To make sure I didn’t bump into anything I kept a hand forward, and stopped myself from bumping face-first into the wall.  Then I turned, using the wall as an anchor, and crept my way to the door.

Luckily the door was new, and opened both easily and without a sound.  I cracked it just enough for me to slip through, then pulled it shut behind me with nary a click.  I was worried that either Akane or Liz would be standing guard as backup to make sure I didn’t escape, but they seemed to think Roni would be enough to keep me in place.  There was a dim outline of the door that stood out like a beacon in the darkness, and I cautiously tip-toed my way to it.

I made it to the door without incident, and though I had to stand on my toes to reach the handle I got it open easily enough.  I slipped through the doorway and shut it behind me, my heart pounding the whole time.  If I made so much as a bump I expected all three of them to come after me with a fanatical desire to punish me for my transgression.  Fortunately, I avoided making any noise the whole time on my way out, and was free to go ahead with the next bit of my escape.

Getting out was my priority, but I couldn’t leave Vanessa behind.  She was the only one who had been kind to me since I fell out of Gina’s favor, and with me gone she would become the next target for their abuse.  Taking her with me would be the least I could do to repay her. 

Crossing the tank would be treacherous as well: everyone else was well aware that I had become persona non-grata and would report me to the authorities Gina had set up if they saw me.  With the dim moonlight coming in through the window of the room outside I could see the field ahead of me, strewn with the dozen or so inhabitants left to the elements.  Most of them were huddled together for warmth, while a few were under whatever tattered blankets were left from the last time Gina had dropped some scraps of cloth in over a year ago.

I walked along the rear pane of the terrarium, careful not to risk waking anyone up.  Halfway through I saw a dark figure ahead of me and froze.  The further I got away from Roni’s palace the worse it would be when they returned me.  Hopefully this person would walk away without noticing me and I could continue on my way.

The figure turned around and I braced for the consequences.  Instead, the person simply stood there considering me.  I looked up from the black, form-fitting leggings barely staying together to the too-small tank top, and finally to Kristie’s face.  She looked down at me listlessly, her radiant brown eyes now dull.  It looked like she was still in shock from the whole incident and had no idea what to do with herself.

“Oh, it’s you,” Kristie said without inflection.  I put a finger on my lips, indicating for her to quiet down, but she continued in the same deadpan.  “What’re you doing up?”

“I’m going to see a friend,” I said quickly.  It was true, and she didn’t need to know what I had planned after.

“Oh.”  It seemed that Kristie did not know anything else to say, though I could see the gears turning behind her blank expression.  “Funny, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?” I asked, trying to slowly sneak past her.  She was a wild card, I told myself, and might be eager to get back in Gina’s good graces. 

“I’ve been agonizing over Alex for months,” she replied.  “Thought I was too tall for him, or worried what people would think.”  Kristie shot a hand out, loosely grabbing my face.  Apparently she had noticed me trying to get away and wanted an audience.  “Now we’re the same height but he’s… with Shelby.  All because I brought him to hang out with my friends.”

I didn’t personally see anything funny in the situation, but also wanted to keep from upsetting her.  “Look, Kristie,” I began, slowly pulling her hand away from my face, “I know you feel betrayed by Gina, and you have every right to.”  Briefly I paused, thinking about whether I really wanted to do this.  “She probably has it out for you especially, since you used to be friends.  I’m making a break for it and I’m taking some people with me.  You’re… welcome to come if you want.”

Kristie remained impassive, and only looked at me curiously.  I began to worry I had made a grave misstep when she finally answered, “Okay.”  She turned the same direction I had been going, then looked down at me again.  “Where?”

I pointed to the run-down house I had lived in for years.  “Stopping off there first,” I said, and set off on the way I had been going.  Kristie kept pace with me, walking with incredibly slow steps to keep from getting too far ahead of me.  The whole time she kept her gaze locked on me, appearing almost bemused by the whole situation.  Probably she was still stunned by how unreal this was and figured this made as much sense as anything else had tonight.

It took several more minutes, Kristie patiently walking with me the whole time, before we arrived at the old house.  The door had finally fallen off its hinges from the intense seismic activity that night and laid across the threshold.  I walked over the door, careful not to make a sound, while Kristie practically stomped her way over it.  I turned to caution her to be quiet, but with that single step she was already inside the house.

Vanessa awoke with a start when she heard us come in and her eyes darted back and forth before settling on us.  “Oh, it’s you,” she said, visibly relaxing.  “I’m surprised Roni let you out, though it looks like she sent someone along to watch you.”

I looked at Kristie, trying to put together what Vanessa had just said.  “Oh, her?” I asked, pointing at the brunette twice my size as though I had just noticed her.  “She’s not with them.  In fact, she wants to come with us.”

Vanessa looked exasperated while she got out of her chair.  “Really?” she asked, walking over to me.  She stood close enough that I had to strain looking up at her.  “I didn’t know ‘we’ were going anywhere.”

Mentally I stumbled a little.  Getting out made so much sense that I hadn’t even considered that Vanessa might not want to leave.  Then I remembered that I hadn’t even told her the plan yet.  “I’m getting out of here,” I announced, “and I want you to come with me.”

She looked surprised, as though the idea had never occurred to her.  “I want to get out of here as much as you do,” Vanessa admitted, “but why me?  Why not everyone else?”  Then she shifted her eyes toward Kristie, non-verbally asking, And why her?

“I can’t stay here any longer.  Gina is getting increasingly violent toward me, and it’s only a matter of days before she decides she has no use for me.  If I want to have any chance of survival I need to get out of here, now.  Once I’m gone, though, you’ll be her next target for abuse, and I can’t let you go through that.  We need to leave while we still can.”

Vanessa appeared to think it over for a surprisingly long amount of time: running away was such a no-brainer to me.  “Thank you for thinking of me,” she finally said.  “I can’t in good conscience let you go alone.  You’re so small, after all, you need someone big like me and Kristie to protect you.  Besides, you’ll need someone to talk to on the way.  So what’s the plan?”

I waited a moment to let suspense build up.  “It’s surprisingly simple,” I began.  “Every Saturday Gina leaves for several hours shortly after she wakes up.  That should give us enough time to get out of the terrarium and hide somewhere else before she gets back.  There’s still a hole dug out of a corner from the last time I escaped that she’s never fixed, we can use that and climb down one of the supports.”

Vanessa tapped her chin while thinking it over.  “It’s nice and simple, I like it,” she started, “but what about once we’re out?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted, “but it’s hard to plan for since I haven’t seen the outside of that door in six years.  We’ll think of something.”

“And you’re okay with this?” she asked Kristie.  Gina’s cast-off friend nodded, and Vanessa sighed.  “I guess if you’re determined to go through with it we can improvise past the threshold.  How long until we leave?”

“She won’t wake up for a few more hours, so we’ve got some time to kill.”  The three of us sat down and started talking, telling jokes and stories from before we had shrunk to keep the tension at bay.  It was crucial we stayed awake: if we dozed we could miss our opportunity and might not get another chance.

Sunlight poured into the room before we heard any stirring from the room outside our tank.  Thudding footsteps shook the weakened supports of the house, and we quickly shot to our feet.  In order to not seem suspicious we walked outside to see the giantesses getting up and around.  “I had a lot of fun last night, Gina!” Julie announced while she walked to the door.

“Yeah, thanks for inviting us!” Ashley tacked on, following Julie.  “I can’t wait for you to bring us a tiny man of our own!”

“Don’t worry about it!” Gina replied, stepping out of bed and stretching.  “I’ll see you all at practice and we can talk about it more, all right?”

“Yeah, sure thing!” the other two said, stepping out of the room.

A shadow fell over us as the sun was blocked out.  Shelby hunched over in front of the glass, practically pressing her nose against the pane.  Her emerald eyes darted around, searching for something, and came to rest on our trio.  Upon seeing us her face lit up, and she began tapping on the glass excitedly, making it rattle in its fixtures with an incredibly racket.

“Hey Kristie!” she shouted.  The barrier muffled her voice somewhat, but it echoed in the empty space, giving the impression she was all around us.  “Hope you’re having fun in there, you little bitch!”  Movement caught my eye, and I saw a tiny person dangling between two of her fingers.  “I’m taking him home with me and you can’t do anything about it!”  Shelby laughed, a horrible sound that was amplified by bouncing off the walls, then stood and left without another word.

Kristie seemed upset, so I put a hand on the small of her back to comfort her.  She gave no reaction, so I left it there while I spoke.  “Nothing you can do about it now,” I said, knowing it would do little to assuage her.  “The important thing is you get out of here and never have to see her again.”  The only sign she even heard me was the slight tilt of her head, which I took as a positive enough sign.

Gina left the room briefly to do her morning routine and we waited patiently for her to come back.  So long as her gym bag was in the room I knew we would barely even get out of the terrarium before she came back.  We bided our time, making sure Kristie wasn’t going to have a breakdown so close to the critical moment.

Our captor returned and walked over to the bag we had all been watching without even taking time to menace us.  She must have been running late.  “You be good while I’m gone, tinies!” she called out when she hoisted her bag.  “Remember that your Goddess is always watching!”  Without any further harassment she stormed out the door, and we listened carefully as her footfalls on the stairs gradually grew quieter until the dull thud of the front door signified her departure.

I wasted no time once Gina was out the door.  If her three minions caught us there was little we would be able to do to escape, and they would no doubt put us under close watch until our captor returned.  Quickly I rushed over to the small hole I had knocked out in the corner.  To my relief the only thing covering it was the scrap of plastic I had laid over it on my way out last time, hiding it from cursory looks.  With a heave I pulled on it, and Vanessa added her muscle to get it out of the way sooner. 

With the way open, we saw a sheer climb down the several-foot-tall iron support holding up the tank.  Chips in the paint and small imperfections in the casting gave plenty of hand- and footholds for the descent, which I had exploited several times before.  Without hesitation I slid into the hole and grabbed on to the cold metal, quickly making my way down so that the girls could follow closely.

Years of Gina’s games had made me an adept climber, so even without extensive experience with this post I doubted I would have had much difficulty with it.  Directly above me was Kristie, and I could tell that she had done a good amount of strength training throughout her life, some of which probably involved wall climbing.  Between that and her mechanical movements, I had no doubt she would make it to the bottom without issue.  Beyond her was Vanessa, who hadn’t been subject to as many of Gina’s games and did not seem particularly strong to begin with.  Because of her I kept it slow, giving her plenty of time to secure herself and calling out safe holds if it looked like she was having trouble.

It took about half an hour with having to practically hold Vanessa’s hand the whole way, and several times her foot slipped on the smooth metal, but to my relief we made it to the carpet.  I waited for the other two to make it down before continuing along the route, standing between them when they hopped off the bar.  I looked up at both of them and gave a slight nod, then trod through the carpet toward the enormous portal that would take us out of this awful room.

I made good progress through the rough terrain, having become used to trudging through it to escape Gina’s teasing stomps.  When I looked behind me, however, I saw that the other two were struggling.  Despite their significantly longer legs, they were having trouble clearing the long, thick fibers that threatened to ensnare me.  Again I waited for them, encouraging them to move with the promise of some measure of freedom at the end.  It took another thirty minutes, but when we finally reached the door I let out a sigh of relief.  This was it.

I ducked under the door and peeked through the crack, eager to see the world on the other side.  Since their rooms were directly across from each other’s I expected to see Fulda’s room, practically untouched since she had left, and readied myself for the flood of nostalgia.  Instead I saw an enormous black object blocking the doorway, running the entire length of the door.  Not a single ray of light made it past the tremendous barrier.  We were trapped.

Before I could turn around and tell my companions there was a loud bang on the door, then it rushed inward.  The strong gust of wind from the door swinging open threw me from my feet and sent me tumbling head over feet until I landed some distance away.  When the stars cleared from my eyes I saw Gina stoop through the doorway, then stand so that she towered over us, hands on her hips.  She laughed contemptuously, then said, “Caught you, you little shits!  And you took your fucking time getting here, too.  It’s a good thing practice was canceled today or I would have already missed it.”

Vanessa sniffled back her disappointment while I only looked up at her in confusion.  “Oh, don’t be so surprised,” she continued, mockingly.  “I’m a Goddess, after all, I see and know everything.”  Her hand slipped down to her pocket, then pulled out the phone sticking halfway out of it.  “This helped too.  ‘Escape planned for after you leave, wait a bit and you can catch them red-handed.’  What a helpful text from someone on the inside.”

Immediately my suspicions jumped to Kristie, but I had been watching her ever since I bumped into her.  When had she sent that?  “Though I’d love to see you turn on each other, it wasn’t one of you.  Despite what you think I have many devout worshippers, all of who would be willing to sell you out.”  I continued looking up at Gina fearfully.  I expected her to be angry if she caught us, but at worst she seemed amused by our escape attempt.

“You’re probably wondering how I’m going to punish you for this,” Gina said, taking the words right out of my mouth.  “You expect Me to shrink you some more, put you in My shoe and walk around until you beg for mercy, right?  Wrong.  It’s become clear to me that My typical methods don’t work, so I’ve decided to try something more unorthodox.”  She stepped over us, her foot creating a tremendous earthquake when it struck the ground.  Briefly she fiddled with the terrarium before turning back to us.  “It just so happens your punishment will be someone else’s reward.”

Gina bent over and placed one gigantic hand over Kristie.  When she removed it, the brunette had been replaced by a blond over twice her size.  She looked down at us and chuckled, then the deep, resonating chuckle from Gina drowned her out.  “Get up,” she commanded.  Disobedience might feel good, I told myself, but would ultimately be futile.  Begrudgingly I got to my feet, followed by Vanessa about a foot away, and found that I did not quite come up to the knees of the long, smooth legs of the newcomer.  Roni.

“High Priestess Veronica, I-“

“Can it, worm,” she demanded, looking down at me haughtily.  “Your constant failures amuse Gina, but she has reached the end of her rope with you.” 

“Look here, My tiny worshippers, and rejoice!” Gina bellowed, taking the floor for herself.  “As a reward for her dedicated service to Me, Veronica has cast off the shackles of her tiny form and grown beyond her role has High Priestess!  From now on she will be Veronica, Goddess of law and order and executer of my will!”  Roni gave me one more smug look, then she began to glow.

In a split second Roni doubled in size, then again, leaving me looking up at her from her ankles.  Her growth continued, and in a few more seconds her shoe alone dwarfed me.  She expanded further, quickly dwarfing the tank she had lived in just a few moments earlier.  When she finally stopped I stood under the rubber overhang of her toe, absolutely miniscule compared to her.  In seconds Roni had gone from towering over me to a titaness, nearly equal to Gina in size.

“Wow, everything’s so small now!” Roni exclaimed, looking around.  Her voice had always been harsh before, but now it was a terrible series of explosions far above my head.  “And that thorn in Our side is pathetic.  I can barely see him from up here.”

“Speaking of My boy toy,” Gina said, “You’ve had to deal with him for two years.  What do You think we should do with him to bring him in line?”

Roni made a thoughtful sound which came down to me like a roar.  “Physical punishment is good, and I don’t think we should be shy with that,” she began.  “However, he has grown attached to one of those bug-sized women he escaped with, and I think we should work on that.”

“You don’t mean Kristie, do you?” Gina asked, reluctant to give up her new captive.  Probably she had plans for her.

“No, though I could see him developing an embarrassing amount of feelings for her if they were kept together.  I mean the little whelp he goes to for comfort whenever something doesn’t go his way.”  Her blue eyes flashed over to Vanessa, paralyzed with fear while she stared up at Roni.  “It’s Vanessa, right?”  Slowly she nodded, barely able to swallow.

“You should say goodbye to Vanessa,” Roni said.  Then she raised her sneaker and shot it toward Vanessa, who could only stand in terrified witness as her doom approached.

“Vanessa, no!” I shouted, but my protest did little to deter Roni.  Her foot collided with Vanessa and drove her to the floor.  She let out a terrified squeak before her body was flattened under Roni’s shoe with a sickening crunch.  Horrified, I looked up the colossus in front of me to see her with a self-satisfied smile.  Then she turned her attention to me.

“I mentioned something about physical punishment too, didn’t I?” she asked.

“You did,” Gina confirmed, moving to form a wall with Roni.

“Let’s show him what We can do.”  Both giantesses beamed down at me, imagining what they were going to do to me, while Vanessa’s blood was still wet.  With nowhere to go I looked up helplessly at the pair while they made mental preparations.

Finally my legs unfroze, allowing me to take a couple unsteady steps backward.  Any way I moved was in vain, of course, since I had nowhere to go behind me and two colossal women in front.  The only thing I could do was get out from beneath the toe of Roni’s tremendous shoe.

When my line of sight was clear I wished I had stay put.  Past the hundreds of feet of pale flesh towering over me, beyond the athletic gear that had exploded in size with her, I saw her looking directly at me as though she had been expecting me.  The scorn in her expression was overwhelming.  If Gina had come to treat me like a bug, Roni actually thought of me as one. 

“You really shouldn’t leave your toys lying around,” Roni said, the tone of her menacing voice carefully calibrated to mock me.  “They might get broken when stepped on.  Let me pick this one up for you.”  Quickly she leaned over and bent her knees, bringing her all-encompassing gaze close to my level.  Out of reflex I turned to run, but the shadow of her hand fell over me immediately.  An instant later her fingers swooped in and clamped around me, sealing me into her iron grip.  My head swam and stars danced on the edge of my vision during my rapid ascent, the punishing result of her merely standing.

Luckily my time in Roni’s fist was short.  Her fingers opened quickly enough I saw their tips had been pressed white against me and I was briefly stuck to one, lifting off her palm when it raised.  I lazily arced upward, then crashed down onto the hard surface of her palm and rolled until I was in the middle.  A single, pitiful groan escaped my throat before I dared to open my eyes, and as soon as I did the disorientation returned.

Roni’s face loomed over me, larger than the head of any statue or monument I had ever seen.  Her pale skin was pulled firm yet flexible over her rounded features, which had worked to soften her gruff demeanor before she was the size of a skyscraper to me.  Tiny dimples ran up the tremendous nose in front of me, her pores scattered but none too far from each other.  Light practically glistened off her skin, culminating in the gleaming of her light eyes.  Pitch black pupils contrasted sharply with them, wobbling slightly while they struggled to stay on me.  An occasional stray strand of platinum blond hair fluttered down, only to be blown away by imperceptible air currents.

For a while she simply stayed there, staring at me in the middle of her palm.  I remained on my back while I fearfully looked up at her, trying to read anything from her expression.  Roni had spent years being inscrutable to me, however, and now was no different.  Tension thickened while laid frozen from fear in her hand, me desperate to see her move while she was content to keep me in suspense.

Finally, with a rush of breath from her nostrils, Roni cracked a smile.  “You’re just so fucking small,” she boomed, causing my teeth to rattle with the force of her voice.  “I always thought it was funny how out of a group of tiny people you still managed to be the tiniest.  You know that you’re a joke, right?  Everyone thinks you’re pathetic.  Every time you made a half-hearted attempt to lead us we would spend hours afterward discussing how much fun we’d have if we ever got you alone.”

In a flash her free hand shot forward and her fingers pinched me around the legs.  She lifted me out of her palm and let me dangle upside down in front of her face while she fixed me with an amused look.  “Tell me, you self-important insect: for all the time I towered over you in there, did you ever imagine I would literally hold you in the palm of my hand?  Outside of your weird little fantasies, of course.”  I kept silent, sure that she was getting more than enough satisfaction mocking me like this. 

Roni shook her wrist, violently throwing me back and forth and causing my vision to tremble.  “Hey shit-for-brains!” she bellowed, her voice alone pushing me back in her grip.  “I asked you a fucking question, answer me!  For once I know you’re not jerking off to me since I can see your hands.”  My eyes must have gone wide, since she continued, “That’s right, you little perv, I know you’ve been angling to fuck me this whole time.  I’m not a moron.  Now answer the question.”

I was still seeing three of Roni, all waving and swaying back and forth into each other, and could scarcely focus on anything.  “I’m sorry, what was the question?” I managed to squeak after a great amount of effort.

Two enormous blue eyes rolled so far back in their sockets Roni looked like she was physically in pain from the effort.  “I almost feel bad for you,” she declared.  “Not only are you bug-sized, you’re also incredibly stupid.”  She released my legs, letting me drop from her hand.  Before I plummeted to the floor, however, her other hand was out to catch me, causing me to bounce once off the taut skin.  I sank down as she cupped her hand around me.  “Maybe this will jog your memory.”  Her other hand slid over, covering me like a roof and blocking out any light from reaching me.

Roni’s hands shot upward and I felt myself pressed down further into her skin, then I was launched into her other hand when they suddenly stopped.  Before I could fall back from the ceiling she drew them down again, driving me into the roof until halting again and throwing me into the bottom hand.  Then she began shaking them side to side along with the vertical motion, bouncing me around in the small chamber she had made until I no longer knew which way was up or down.  I wanted to puke from the sharp and frequent changes of direction, but simply had nothing inside me to come up.  The motion was so incessant I could not even scream while being tossed around like a die.

Finally the churning ceased and I was allowed to settle back into Roni’s cupped hand.  The “ceiling” hand lifted away and light flooded in, overwhelming my dazed eyes.  Though everything was wavy and indistinct I could make out the vague shape of Roni’s tremendous face peering down at me helpless in her hand.  After a moment her hand came back, fingers primed to pinch around me.  I was unable to offer even a modicum of resistance when she forcibly seized me and held me aloft, allowing me to dangle upside down again.

My body swung limply beneath her gigantic fingers while she held me mere inches from her eye.  I did my best to get my bearings in the few moments she allowed me, but I was still feeling the intense acceleration inside her hands when she spoke.  “I’ll ask you again, and this time I want an answer or it’ll be worse.”  Her voice was even more overwhelming this close.  “Did you ever imagine me fucking controlling you like this when you were trying to get into my pants?”  A beat passed, and she added, “It’s a yes or no question!”

The inside of my head throbbed, and I was not sure which of the three pupils dancing in front of me was the real one.  A booming voice made demands of me and seemed insistent, but I had no idea what it had said.  I was still struggling to get my bearings and could only offer a quiet, “Uh, what?” in response.

Roni’s features darkened.  Whatever answer she wanted, that was not it.  “You are so fucking useless!” she roared, making me feel like I was in a wind tunnel.  “I’d say you’re as dumb as you are small but that would be an insult to bugs!  I don’t know how Gina’s put up with you for so long, I would have smashed you in an hour if it were up to me.”  The vice grip on my legs released, and again I fell the short distance into her cupped, waiting hand.

Instead of renewing the torment her palm flattened out, and she gave me a stern glower.  “I need a minute to cool down,” she declared while lowering her other hand to rest atop the heel of her palm.  Roni’s middle fingers was cocked behind her thumb, dead centered on me.  “I’ll let Gina deal with your dumb ass for a while, see if there’s a secret or you really are just a moron.  Gina, catch!” 

Roni’s finger slipped off her thumb with a crack and raced toward me.  The tip of her finger caught me in the gut, knocking the breath out of my lungs and forcing me to conform to the contour of her skin as well as I could.  When its forward motion stopped I was flung off due to inertia and went flying away from her hand.  As Roni grew more distant I saw the smile return to her face, and her eyes lit up with satisfaction at how expertly she had flicked me.

My back hit a warm, soft surface at intense velocity, fortunately allowing most of the force to be transferred into the backstop.  Before I could slide down Gina’s fingers snapped shut like a steel trap, holding me firmly in her fist.  I knew it was dark, but my vision was so full of stars that it did not even register.  For that matter the normal issues I had with breathing inside her hand were absent too, superseded by the firm blow from Roni’s finger.

Slowly my fleshy prison rotated until it was horizontal, then the fingers trapping me gradually pulled away.  My vision was still blurry, but the sight of Gina peering down at me was unmistakable.  She seemed to drink in the superiority she held over me, basking in the power she had.  Though my head was pounding and my mind scattered, I knew we shared an understanding that I hoped Roni would come to: there was no one in the whole world that she could have so much power over.

Gina placed a tremendous finger beside me, dimpling the skin enough for me to tilt down toward it.  “Veronica just doesn’t understand you yet,” she said, her rumbling voice slightly gentler than usual.  “Give it time.”  She began slowly swirling the finger around me, shifting my body with the indentation as it moved.  “I know that you can’t help but imagine yourself tiny compared to every woman you come across, it’s second nature to you now.  Why, I bet that before I even let go of Veronica the first day you pictured yourself at her feet, staring up at her in awe like you do now, didn’t you?”

Her finger stopped its movements around me and lifted a little.  Gina let it hover over me while she continued, “I want to be mad that you fantasized about her so often.”  The finger set down on my chest, making my ribs strain from the weight.  “We were supposed to be in a relationship, at least that’s what you told Fulda.  I can’t blame you, though.  She’s hot!  Tall, fit, gorgeous… she’ll fit right into the role of mysterious foreign exchange student in case anyone asks.”

Despite her “understanding” mood Gina let her digit linger atop me.  “You want to make out with her right now?”

“The fuck?” Roni interjected.

Gina suppressed an embarrassed giggle.  “Oh, don’t worry about it!  It’s not like you’ll be sucking face with this little twerp, and he won’t be cheating on me.”  She shook her head, brushing me with some loose strands of golden hair.  “Imagine, someone this small cheating on the only girl who’ll have him…”

Roni still looked apprehensive about the whole situation, but my attention was quickly drawn away by bigger issues.  The tree trunk of a finger pinning me in Gina’s palm rapidly expanded in size to be a redwood, then a towering obelisk as I had never seen before.  In seconds I was unable to see up the finger at all, only the detailed whorls of her fingertip which soon were larger than me as well.  Each minute contour of the ridges between the depths of her whorls was apparent to me before long.

Gina lifted her finger and I felt the world rushing past me.  To my horror I was stuck to her fingertip.  Everything whipped around while she rotated her hand, and I felt more than knew that I was facing down.  I struggled to keep my mind in place while racing upward, propelled by her hand.  Briefly I risked a glance behind me and wished I had resisted: her finger was on a direct course to deliver me to her mouth.  Desperately I struggled to free myself from what was holding me to her finger, but I was so miniscule it was like trying to swim in molasses.  Inexorably I was drawn upward toward her cavernous maw with no means of resisting.

There was a light squeeze, then a greater force took hold and her finger withdrew.  While I tried to get my bearings a deafening smack rang out from behind me, and my head snapped upward.  A broad pink embankment encompassed my vision in every direction.  Panicking, I looked forward and saw I was roughly on level with Roni’s eyes.  The realization sank in: I was stuck to Gina’s lower lip and trapped in whatever product she had spread across them that morning.

Powerlessly I watched her fantastically long arm extend toward Roni, then cup her chin with her fingers.  This was a new dimension of terrifying: it was almost as though I were seeing through Gina’s eyes, but I was not able to control anything.  Even my own limbs were hopelessly restrained by Gina’s lip product.  Even worse, Roni seemed receptive to Gina, gently tilting her head to the side and lowering her eyelids.

I screamed while Gina advanced toward Roni, but I had no illusions that either of them heard me.  Gina tentatively pressed her lips against Roni’s, squeezing me between them while the heat shot up several degrees.  She pulled back, and Roni’s previously smooth lips now looked like a craggy outcropping from years of neglect.  Roni was apparently insatiable however, and pulled Gina in toward her.  Their lips came together again, pressing me into the soft flesh of Roni’s lips and squeezing me against Gina’s.

Loud smacks hammered my ears while their lips came together and apart, with my world flickering between darkness and the microscopic contours of Roni’s lips.  Sweat poured from my skin in amazing quantities, but never enough to break the bonds with Gina’s lips.  Black spots appeared on the edges of my vision, and I realized I hadn’t taken a full breath in several minutes.  I began to feel faint while the two titanesses showed no signs of slowing down.

Roni let out a low moan, blasting me with hot air.  My head lolled as I no longer had the strength to hold it up, and my bones shook from the power in Roni’s involuntary sound.  Their mouths came together once more and I felt my body become light.  The pair was still in the height of a passionate embrace when my world went dark, and I slipped from consciousness just when Gina’s tongue slipped into Roni’s mouth.

Crashes and powerful tremors roused me from my unconscious state.  Groggily I looked around.  Clearly I was in a bedroom, but not Gina’s.  The floor was pure hardwood, and a bed with blue covers which hung all the way to the floor loomed in the distance.  Opposite the bed was a towering bookcase packed with leather-bound tomes to the point that it was overflowing.  Beside the bed there was a lamp on a nightstand, throwing off the only illumination in the room.  Apparently I had been out for a while, but I did not feel rested.

Another loud crash followed by a quake, and I forced myself to look toward my feet.  A titanic stockinged foot slammed down, generating a powerful gust of wind, but I was still so soaked with sweat that I was stuck to the floor.  The other foot cycled forward, its heel setting down in front of me with a deafening explosion and enough force to make my insides quiver.  My eyes shot up to see the ball of a foot hanging over me.  It began a swift descent, and I welcomed oblivion.

The indomitable foot stopped just before crushing me, close enough that I could feel the worn nylon on the sole.  It quickly withdrew, and I found myself looking up a monolithic pair of dark stockings to a black dress and Akane’s horrified face above that.  “Oh my!” she exclaimed, clapping a hand to her mouth.  “I almost smashed you!”  Her voice was muffled, but I still felt the raw power within it.  “I’m so sorry!”

The great colossus lowered herself to a knee with a resonating boom and fixed me with a gaze from her dark eyes.  “Here, let me get you off the floor,” Akane said while a hand swooped toward me.  I was unable to resist, and she easily plucked me up between her fingers.  She lifted me to her face slowly enough that I barely felt it, and I could see the regret in her soft features.  “I never would have forgiven myself if I had smashed you, little guy.  And right before it’s my day to watch you, too!”  Ah, that was why she cared.

Gradually she stood, and a grimace twisted her face.  “Ew, you’re wet,” she proclaimed when she was fully standing.  “I’m not sure what from, but… I’d dry you off, but I really don’t have anything for it so I’ll have to let you air dry.”  Akane took a step toward the wall, and through the two protruding mounds of her fingers I saw a pair of stockings hanging from hooks.  “I’ll just put you somewhere safe so you don’t wander into danger tonight.  I really, really don’t want you to get stepped on, especially by accident.”

I did not believe Akane’s concern, but it hardly mattered.  Her hand was already outstretched, pulling back the opening of one of the stockings.  Carefully she held me at the top, and when she was satisfied with the placement let me go.  I plummeted to the bottom, where I bounced of the heel and rolled down the length of the foot to settle at the reinforced toe.  I looked up the enormous dark tube until another horrific crash drew my attention.

Akane slid under the covers, and with a slender arm reached out for the lamp.  “Goodnight, little man!” she called out, and with a click the room was plunged into complete darkness.  There was loud rustling while she turned over and I hung helplessly in the toe of her stocking, looking into the inky blackness around me.  Each time I closed my eyes I the image of Vanessa being flattened under Roni’s shoe overtook my vision, and in the stillness of the night I couldn’t help but hear the light crunch of her body.  It was going to be a long night, and an even longer day.

Throughout the night I barely slept a wink.  For once it had nothing to do with comfort, since laying at the bottom of Akane’s stocking was almost the exact same as being in a hammock without the worry of falling out.  Exhaustion eventually overcame the non-stop replay of Vanessa’s death as well, but in its stead arose a scene even more terrifying: my own demise.  Between Gina’s increasing roughness and Roni’s return to the outside I expected to be no more than a smear within a week.

The worst part of it all was that my brain could not settle on only one scenario.  First I imagined Gina handing me off to Roni and giving her carte blank, only for her to squeeze me in a fist until popping.  After that it was Gina setting me down on the floor and stomping on me, then grinding me into the carpet.  Following that I pictured her shrinking me until I no longer existed in any meaningful sense of the word, a death without dying.  Every time I shook one scene out of my mind another arose, with a consistent feeling that it would happen soon.

It was still dark when the pounding of feet on wood began, informing me that it was officially morning.  There was a click, and light flooded the room, it all reached me in a hazy fog through my dark nylon prison.  My sleep-deprived mind got hung up on the petty details though, like this house having functioning lights and, apparently, real floors.  I could not remember the last time any of the lights in the run-down building Fulda had left for me worked, one of the many things which had fallen by the wayside as she stopped caring about my well-being.

More footsteps, and I saw a giant shadow moving toward me.  It was like looking through cloudy glass, but when it got closer I clearly made out Akane’s face stretching from end to end of my field of view.  Her unblemished skin was marred by hundreds of tiny interlinked threads, forming a fine mesh that was just visible to me.  I tried rolling over to face her more directly, but the encasing nylon stretched too easily, and all I managed to do was find out what it must be like to be stuck in quicksand.

A long shape extended forward, and with two digits she gripped the top of my vertical prison.  Akane gently lifted it up and I began to subtly swing back and forth, the tiny movement enough to start a minor pendulum effect for me.  She held the stockings at arm’s length while she carried them back to her bed, as though they contained hazardous material she wanted to avoid inhaling at all costs.

Carefully she draped them on the edge of her bed, acting like even a light jostle would shatter them.  I rolled a little from the moment, ending on the knotted stitching where her toes would be.  My cell drooped slightly, leaving me to hang a bit below Akane’s knees.  To maintain some semblance of continuity I looked up, trying to focus on her while my mind failed to assemble the pieces into a single coherent image.  Something about having an enormous shadow loom over me instead of a person made it even worse, playing into my paranoia from my restless night.  Now destruction could take any shape.

Blurred movements and a wave of sounds built my existential dread, culminating in the sound of a long zipper being drawn.  That could be anything from Akane’s dress to a lightless bag to stuff me in and forget about, I thought.  Something enormous crashed onto the bed, rocking me back and forth from the impact.  I finally got a solid update when I bumped into something firm yet supple, and looked up to see a slender leg stretching toward the sky.

Finally the time came, and my nylon cage was lifted from the bed.  I looked up the slim tube of synthetic fabric and saw long, delicate fingers probe into the opening, prying it apart.  After a bit of fumbling on her part the opening had widened to the point that I could see a huge, light-drinking eye staring down at me surrounded by pale skin.  I gave a feeble wave to greet her behemoth iris, but got nothing back.

The bottom of Akane’s stocking wobbled while she lowered it, and her fingers adjusted around the top.  A few seconds passed in chaos, then a row of toes burst through the darkness.  My eyes went wide and I looked for anywhere to crawl through to escape the advancing foot, but found nothing in the intact stockings.  “Hey, Akane!” I shouted, hoping she would be able to hear me.  “I’m in here!  You put me in here for safe keeping, remember?”  Her foot pushed forward, stretching the nylon around it.  If she did hear me, it was not enough to stop her.

Threads creaked and groaned while they formed a skin-tight seal around Akane’s imperiling foot, its big toe pointed right at me.  Panic gripped my already frayed mental state and I flipped over myself so that I would not have to watch its gradual slide toward me.  Desperate to do something I began clawing at the fabric, hoping to open a gap wide enough to slip through.  The material was too durable, however, and my tiny fingers were barely even enough to nudge it.

Akane’s toe rammed into my back, immediately curving my spine backwards.  She continued to pull, tightening the stocking around her leg and driving her foot further into my back.  My body formed along the curve of her toe, pulled tight and suspended by the fine net around me.  I grimaced from the pain, and let out an agonized cry when I could no longer hold it in. 

Pain shot through my body when Akane wiggled her toes, dragging me up and down with them while she tried to get the nylon to adhere to them more securely.  Maybe she feels something inside it, I hoped, but when a new wave of pain wracked every nerve in me as she stretched her toes I quickly forgot the idea. 

My strained and agonizing position stabilized when Akane was finally satisfied with the fit, but that did not last long.  Her foot pointed down at the floor and began its descent, with me at the front.  The only thing in my head was pain.  Past and present had become meaningless abstract concepts, the only thing that was real was that instant and the inescapable, burning misery.  I welcomed the possibility of being smashed beneath her toe if it would mean an end to this.

To my dismay her toes raised at the last minute, moving me out of harm’s way while another jolt shot though every nerve in my body.  When her foot set down the flesh buoying me widened, further distorting my already strained limbs.  Even worse, I was effectively mounted on the tip of her big toe, keeping my feet just out of reach of the ground.  The tiny bit of relief that would have afforded was denied me, leaving me on the plateau of agony.

Awareness of my situation finally expanded beyond the immediate, paralyzing misery of my body being stretched beyond its shape and included the horrors from the environment of simply being pinned inside a stocking by a gargantuan foot.  The fine mesh cut into my skin, not hard enough to break the surface but with enough force to feel as though it was on the verge of cutting through.  Every square inch of my exposed skin was subjected to this force, and my clothing only slightly dispersed the impact.

As a result of the flesh-rending weaving my lungs could barely expand, leaving me scarcely able to breathe but unable to pass out.  The nylon was skin-tight to me as well and much stronger, keeping my chest neatly constricted.  I was only capable of breathing in small gasps, sometimes not even that much, while my lungs screamed for more.  It was a difficult balance between hyperventilation and asphyxiation, with neither providing the release I desired.

When I thought it could not possibly get worse Akane took a step.  The subtle shift in her weight jabbed her toe deeper into my back, kicking off a new wave of pain right before her foot lifted from the ground.  I sailed through the air on the prow of her toe at what seemed like a million miles an hour, the world flying by at an incredible rate distorted by the dark translucent fabric and burgeoning delirium.  Another jolt when her foot tilted up, with the titaness inflicting my misery just at the edge of my vision.  Vibrations ran up her foot and into my body when her heel slammed into the ground, sharply jerking my limbs back and forth while my whole skeleton rattled.

Every single striding step was like that.  With the powerful forces acting on my body constantly in limbo I was never able to feel settled, and each rhythmic pounding was like the start of a new eternity of misery.  It did not seem like she took many steps, but the endless churning of her foot made it impossible to tell.  For all I knew she walked to the end of the earth and back with me trapped in there, or she paced around her room once. 

Mercifully she came to a stop at last, allowing me to settle back to the plateau of agony instead of constantly being spiked further into the suffering stratosphere.  “Hey Liz, what’s up?” Akane asked.  The gentle rumble of her voice was practically soothing compared to the violent tremors of her footsteps.

The world was still shrouded in the fog of Akane’s stockings, but while everything was still and brightly lit I could see through translucent nylon well enough.  The brunette giantess sat in a thickly-padded leather chair, her long legs crossed at the ankles and propped up on a desk.  She twirled a strand of hair around a finger while reading from a grimoire that was propped open against her thighs.  On the cover were clear, large characters that I had no idea what they meant but knew they came from a dead language that was better off forgotten.  It was an exact recreation of the book from which Gina recited passages while not terrorizing us.

Liz slowly turned to face Akane as though she had been expecting a guest at just this time.  She looked her over and easily spotted the oblong protrusion from her foot, nearly vacuum-sealed in by nylon.  “Not much, just reading the Goddess’s works,” she replied, fighting against a smile.  “You having fun with your little friend?”

Akane hesitated before answering, but failed to pick up on Liz’s glaring hint.  “I can’t find him, actually,” she finally said.  “He’s missing and I’m really worried!”

Liz gave an exaggerated fake gasp at this revelation.  “I’m worried too!” she mocked.  “He was really small when She dropped him off last night, he might have gotten even smaller.  He does that so much it’s almost like he enjoys it.”

“Hm, maybe.”  Akane pondered a second before continuing.  “I remember putting him in my hanging stocking last night so he wouldn’t wander off,” she recounted, conveniently leaving off the part where she almost crushed me by accident.  “Do you think he shrank so much he fell out of it?”

Liz continued staring at me, clearly finding the whole situation amusing.  “He would have to be really small, but I think that’s what happened.”  She must be loving this.  “You should go look for him, I know you were really looking forward to that picnic or whatever you had planned, you weirdo.”

“Yeah, I guess.  Thanks.”  Akane turned and left Liz’s room, beginning the unbreakable cycle of ever-changing suffering once more.  Though it was impossible to hear anything beyond the overwhelming thunder of her feet I was certain Liz began laughing the certain Akane left, allowing me to suffer at the bottom of her stocking.

Akane walked all day looking for me, never thinking to check what the tiny bit of irritation she felt was.  By the end of it I was exhausted from the unending pain and misery, and the only thing keeping me upright was the nylon’s tension forcing me against her toe.  The only upside was that she never put on her pair of high heels, which would have set off a race between her own body heat and being smothered for what would kill me in the most pathetic way.

She draped one leg over the other, allowing her foot to dangle loosely.  This was the first bit of relief I had felt since becoming trapped in Akane’s stocking, since her toe put a smidge less pressure on me and I could hang against the nylon like a net.  The stocking continued to loosen, and I dropped from her toe into the tiny reservoir of fabric hanging off the end.  Its slack increased at a steady rate, and I finally realized that Akane was rolling it off her leg.

At last she pulled it free, releasing me from my prison.  A low gasp burst from above, and her hand began to upend the small ball of fabric.  My limp body rolled out of the black nylon and into her cupped and waiting hand.  I remained still, unable to move even if I wanted and simply glad to breathe freely.  Residual pain was the only way I knew I was not paralyzed, but that was a small comfort while my limbs refused to move anyway.

“Oh Gina!” Akane exclaimed upon seeing my near-lifeless body in her hand.  “Have you been in there this whole time?”  I did not respond.  Words were beyond me at that point, and rational thought was teetering on the brink.  “I was worried about you, why didn’t you say something?”  I would not have dignified that with an answer even if I could.

“I am so, so, so sorry about that,” she continued when I stayed quiet.  Maybe she thought I was mad and giving her the silent treatment rather than on death’s doorstep.  “Please believe me, I had no clue you were in there.”  Surprisingly her voice was laden with sadness, as though she genuinely felt remorseful.  “Here, let me make it up to you.”

Slowly her hand lowered to the mattress, where she created a long slide with her fingers.  I slowly rolled down her digits until hitting the mattress, then she carefully moved her hand away.  Incredibly the mattress was even more comfortable than her cupped palm, though at this point a bed of nails would seem like the height of luxury.

Akane began chanting, and her arcane syllables imbued me with power.  I felt myself sliding along the mattress in both directions, but I could not make my eyes open.  If she was doing this wrong I would shrink to the point of effective non-existence.  While that would be an escape from suffering, I was still against it because I could already hear Gina’s earth-cracking laughter upon hearing the news.

“Oh good, you’re breathing!” she declared.  I was ambivalent on the matter.  “I, uh, think I made you too big, They only want you up to my knees.”  If she shrank me again I would tell her to just end it.  “But… I’m not sure They’ll notice.  Besides, you’ll be more fun to snuggle with now.”  Wait, what?

The mattress dipped behind me, and a long, slender arm wrapped around me.  Akane pulled me close, and I felt warmth radiating from smooth skin.  Silky hairs brushed the back of my neck, and my legs made way for hers as she curled around my body.  “What do you say?” she purred, her voice just a little duskier than normal.  “Want to be my teddy bear tonight?”

On the one hand, she had spent all day nearly killing me out of negligence.  On the other hand, this was the first human touch I had felt in what seemed like forever not explicitly meant to hurt me and might be the last until it was “her” day again.  Besides, she sounded truly sorry for putting me through that.  I gave an affirmative grunt and she squeezed me tighter.  Seconds later I was asleep, my body and mind exhausted from a day of hell.

Three reverberating taps from a finger hitting glass finally woke me up, with Akane’s smooth, warm body still wrapped around me.  I tried to lift her arm off me, but found that while I could move again I was incredibly weak, and the slightest resistance caused pain to shoot up the length of my arm.  Akane must have felt my feeble push, however, and shifted so that her arm was draped along my side.  “Don’t make me get up,” she mumbled.  “I wanna snuggle with my teddy bear.”

Gina’s voice boomed down at us from outside, her words somehow even more intense in the glass, while she conducted her morning teasing.  I had no clue why Akane was not out there with the rest of the shrunken population, but could not complain too much about it.  This was a refreshing break from giant women trying to stomp on me or grind me under their thumbs.  It was almost as though Akane really did not want to hurt me, or at least felt bad about the unending train of misery she had put me on yesterday.

The incessant rumble of Gina’s voice finally faded away, leaving us in peace.  Not long after the tremendous thud of Gina’s door closing, though, there was a loud knock on Akane’s door.  She groaned and began to slide her arm off me, in no hurry to move until there was a louder, much more urgent trio of knocks.  “Akane, open the damn door,” Liz shouted from the other side before pounding several more times.  “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

Finally, Akane uncurled herself from around me, letting her fingers linger on my shoulder as she got up.  “Try not to get too cold without me,” she said with a wink, “I’ll be right back.”  Her footsteps on the wooden floor were distinct as she walked to the door.  Carefully she opened it a crack and peeked through, then asked “What’s up, Liz?”

A loud thud from Liz trying to force the door inward, but Akane managed to hold it fast.  “First of all, where the hell were you this morning?” she demanded.  “You couldn’t even be bothered to spend thirty seconds walking outside to venerate our Goddesses?”

“I had some trouble getting out of bed this morning,” Akane explained.  “See, it’s so warm and comfortable, and I can hear them from inside anyway.  If it’s such a big deal I’ll venerate them twice as hard this evening, okay?”

Liz grunted.  Clearly she was not pleased with the answer, but there was nothing she could do about it.  “Well, try not to miss any more, okay?  I don’t want to pay the price for you being lazy.  And where’s the little guy?  You were supposed to bring him to my room last night.”

“Well, uh, about that…”

Liz scoffed.  “Please tell me you didn’t actually lose him yesterday.  You know he was in your stockings all day, right?”

“Yeah…” Akane had suddenly become very quiet.  “It’s just…”

“Just what?” Liz demanded impatiently.  “He’s still in one piece, right?”

“Yeah…” Akane repeated.  “He’s in bad shape, though.  Whatever you’re going to do to him might actually break him.”

“Are you fucking…” Liz trailed off, so frustrated she could barely think straight.  “Look, I don’t give one Gina damn that you were so rough with him he almost died, I need a fucking foot stool today, got it?”

“Why you-“ Akane began, suddenly filled with energy again.  She took a deep breath to calm herself before continuing.  “I’ll make you a deal: he stays with me until he’s better, and then you can keep him for however many days that is, plus one.”

“I have a counter-offer,” Liz growled.  “I knock you over and grab him because it’s my fucking day to have him, like we all agreed.”

“Come on, give me a week,” Akane bargained.  “Then you can have him for a week, I promise.  Trust me, he won’t be any fun to play with if he’s paralyzed.”

In the silence I could hear the door shaking in Liz’s grip.  “Fine!” she finally spat.  “A week!  But I’m going to spend that week thinking of the most demeaning, humiliating things to do with him, got it?  When you get him back he won’t be the same, I swear.”

“Okay, that’s fine, seeya later,” Akane cheerily replied.  I got the strong impression she was not really listening to her after Liz agreed, simply glad to be rid of her for a bit.  The door clicked shut, and I heard her footsteps thumping on the wood again.  Carefully she crawled back into bed, noticeably slumping the mattress.

I felt a soft hand on my shoulder, and with a gentle tug she rolled me toward her.  When I forced my eyes open I saw that I was looking right at Akane’s breasts, her cleavage enhanced by the lacy black bra cupping them so that her modest chest looked even more impressive to someone my size.  My feet only reached about halfway down her thighs, I noticed.  She still dwarfed me in every conceivable sense, but for now at least she seemed set on using her size for good.

She slid the hand off my shoulder and onto my back, looking down at me admiring her body.  “I know your time being tiny hasn’t been very easy,” she cooed, “but I want you to see that it’s not all bad, my little teddy bear.”  With her arm she pulled me into her, shoving my face in between her breasts.  At first panic flushed my mind as I was certain she was going to smother me, or shrink and crush me between them.  When I realized that she was not using her breasts to torment me, however, I allowed myself to relax and nuzzled my face between them.

Gina and her friends sat around after finishing their lunches, chatting jovially.  With their sudden and sharp increases in height they had to requisition another table so that they could all sit together, propping their feet up in chairs opposite them so that their knees would not bang against the table.  Someone had started to say something when they grabbed it, but quickly thought better of the idea when they saw Gina was involved.

“I can’t believe I’m so much taller than you now,” Ashley teased Julie.  “You better not make me mad or I’ll step on you!”

Julie scoffed.  Ashley had been at this all morning, and her patience for it was already wearing thin.  “You’re an inch taller,” she said, deadpan.  “An inch.  We’re both over ten feet tall now.  I doubt anyone but us even notices who’s taller.”  It was all she could do to stop from yanking out a lock of Ashley’s platinum hair by the roots.

“Yeah, but I notice,” Ashley retorted.  “How can I not?  You’re sooo short compared to me now.”  Julie rolled her eyes while Ashley rambled on.  “Sometimes I look at you all the way down there and feel sorry.  I almost want to crush you just to spare you the misery of being so tiny.”

“Gina, will you knock her down an inch so she’ll shut the fuck up?” Julie asked, exasperated.  “She’s never going to stop teasing me about this one inch.”

“Both of you shut the fuck up,” Gina demanded, completely uninterested in getting involved in their petty squabbles.  “I have a surprise for all of you.”  She reached into her purse, and when she pulled her hand back out it was clenched in a loose fist.  “This should get your minds off a stupid inch.”

Gina went around the table and dropped a tiny person in front of each Julie and Ashley.  The shrunken people gawked up at the giantesses in terror, unused to not having a wall of glass between them and their towering tormentors.  For their part the girls were shocked too, but out of elation at their gifts.  Neither seemed to know what to do, only capable of beaming down at their tiny people.

Ashley was the first to recover.  She leaned in close enough to her tiny person that she bumped him with her nose, knocking him over.  “Wow you’re tiny,” she said, blasting the person with a wave of her hot breath.  “You’re even smaller than Julie, and I didn’t think that was possible!”  Julie rolled her eyes, and Ashley swiped her shrunken man from the table and held him in her fist with just his head poking out.  She kept him there, staring at him struggling to get free, with the biggest smile she’d ever had.

Julie’s reaction was much more subdued.  As opposed to Ashley’s instinct to rush in and terrify her tiny man, she calmly plucked him up from the table.  Slowly she raised him up to her face, where she set him in the middle of her waiting palm.  She looked down at him, grinning, while he stood in awe of her face looming over him.  “You’re mine now,” she whispered, and was ecstatic while his tiny face dropped.

“Uh, Gina?” Shelby spoke up.  “Where’s mine?”

Gina held her fist in front of Shelby, fingers upturned.  “I have a special surprise for you,” she said, and unfolded her fingers.  Shelby immediately recognized the tiny form of Kristie standing in Gina’s hand, quivering from fear.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have!” she exclaimed, overwhelmed with joy to see how puny Kristie was.  “It’s perfect!”

“I knew you’d like it,” Gina replied.  “Go on, pick her up, she’s yours now.  You can do whatever you want with her.”

Barely able to contain herself Shelby reached into Gina’s hand and clasped her fingers around Kristie, pinching her around the waist.  She lifted the tiny woman to her face, holding her about six inches away so she could bask in the power exuding from her.  “Hi Kristie,” she boomed.  “Guess you won’t be playing basketball anymore, huh?”

Kristie struggled to get free of Shelby’s grip, but found herself solidly pinned between her thumb and forefinger.  “Put me down, you giant bitch!” she shouted, impotently slapping Shelby’s thumb.  “This isn’t funny!”

Shelby laughed, throwing flecks of spittle onto the tiny woman in her grasp.  “You’re hilarious!” she said, finally stopping her laughter.  “Like I would take orders from a bug.”  She remained still for a moment, enjoying the feeling of Kristie thrashing between her fingers.  Never before had she felt so powerful.  She could scarcely believe there was an actual, tiny person in her hand, unable to free herself from the lightest of grips.

“I bet you’re wondering where your little ex is, aren’t you?” she asked coyly.  “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you won’t be getting back together with him.  We were talking last night, and he likes his women to be a lot taller than him.  You just don’t measure up anymore.”

“Where is he?” Kristie demanded.  “You better not have hurt him!”

“Oh, he’s fine.  Couldn’t be happier!”  Shelby chuckled.  “He was playing under my feet yesterday, so I put him in my shoe before leaving today.  I haven’t felt any wetness in there, so he must be having the time of his life.”

“Let me see him!” Kristie shouted, then regretted it when she got hit with another wave of laughter from Shelby.

“What did I say about taking orders from bugs?” she asked.  Shelby faked a yawn, showcasing her maw for Kristie.  “You’re boring me now.  You’re so boring, Kristie!  I think it’s time for dessert.”

Shelby parted her lips and began moving Kristie toward them.  “Shelby, no!  No, don’t do this!  Please, I’ll do anything you ask, just don’t eat me, please!” she pleaded, in tears by the end of it, but her protests only got her closer to Shelby’s open mouth.  Kristie was unable to do anything more than blubber incoherently as she passed between Shelby’s lips and teeth, and fully gave herself to despair when the lips closed behind her.  After a couple quick bats of the tongue against her shrunken former friend Shelby swallowed, relishing the feeling of Kristie squirming inside her throat.

“Next time savor it a little more, will you?” Gina scolded.  “Anyway, meet me after school.  The freshman boys team is practicing and some of them haven’t hit their growth spurts left, it’s the perfect chance for you to practice shrinking your own tiny people.”  The other three agreed, then the group dispersed to attend their afternoon classes.

Akane slid her hands beneath my armpits and lifted me out of bed.  I winced and cried out in pain as my spine was forcibly straightened, but she continued lowering me to the floor.  “I know it hurts, my little booboo,” she said, rustling my hair, “but you need to get better.  Come on, take a walk with me and get some blood back to your legs, it’ll do you good.”

I wrapped my arms around Akane’s thigh and leaned heavily against her leg, thankful for the support.  She had eschewed the clothes Gina gave her, saying they made her feel uncomfortable and she felt much more at home in her schoolgirl uniform.  Akane certainly did not hear any complaints from me.  The plaid felt better against my face, and the feel of nylon triggered bad memories that the smooth, supple skin of her thigh did not.

We walked together, very slowly, with me shuffling along each time she dragged the long, ponderous leg I clung to forward.  Every time I looked up at her to get my mind off the pain of walking she was looking back down with a mysterious grin on her face.  She must have really felt bad about what she did to me to be going through this much trouble.  Either that or she really did think I was cute, which could only lead to problems in the future.

When we reached the stairs I balked.  Even clinging to her leg there was no way I would make it down without falling and injuring myself even worse when I took a tumble down the stairs.  Luckily, Akane had a solution.  She lunged from the top step to the bottom, forming a bridge with her legs.  Slowly I crawled up her leg as if it were a rope strung across a chasm until I reached the top, fighting through the pain spasming through my arms.  Then she carefully rotated her leg forward, making sure I had a secure grip on her thigh before setting it back on the ground.  After I felt her loafer touch down I waited a second then slid down her leg, taking it slow until I reached the floor.

We continued our walk, Akane heavily supporting me the whole time, even though we heard the front door slam downstairs.  It was much too early for Gina to be home: the hands of her wall clock were nowhere near what had been outlined and colored by marker as “Gina Time.”  After a couple more shuffling steps we heard pounding footfalls coming up the stairs.  I began to get scared.  What if someone had come to rob the place?  Would they steal us, and if they did would that actually be worse?  With a turn of the knob the door swung inward, and my questions were answered.

Two black and white low-top Converse slapped their way in, heralding the advance of black yoga pants straining against the bulging calves and watermelon-sized thighs of her legs.  She wore a blue sports bra as a top, showing off her broad shoulders, strong arms, and ripped abs and complementing a golden tan.  Her long auburn hair was braided twice in the front and pulled around so it could be worked into a single braid running down her back and secured with a blue ribbon, and her icy blue eyes confidently surveyed the room.

Fulda had returned.

Fulda’s attention was immediately drawn to the scarcely-dressed behemoth sitting on Gina’s bed, her long legs propped against the opposite wall while she read from the grimoire.  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

“I’m Veronica,” she casually answered, not even looking up from the tome.  Roni made a show of turning the page to emphasize how unconcerned she was about the new arrival.  “Who’re you?”

Fulda scoffed, taken aback by the enormous blond’s audacity.  “That’s not what I asked,” she retorted.  “Who are you, and what are you doing in my sister’s room?”

Roni rolled her eyes and slammed the book shut, then drew her legs in.  She tossed the book onto the pillow and stood, drawing out the process of rising to her full height to exaggerate it.  When she was done began walking over toward Fulda, saying, “I’m an exchange student from Sweden.”  Her long strides carried her across the room in only two steps, and she stood in front of Fulda, staring down at her.  After crossing her arms beneath her chest to give herself a stern appearance she continued, “I didn’t know Gina had a kid sister.  Shouldn’t you still be at school?”

Fulda was unused to being dwarfed by someone so severely, but kept her face stony while gazing up at the taller woman.  She only came up to the middle of Roni’s tummy, a novel experience for her.  “You must be one of Gina’s friends,” she stated, doing her best to keep her cool.  “I was hoping to surprise her by dropping in, but it looks like I’m the one who got surprised.  Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Dunno.  Could be a couple hours,” Roni answered, doing her best to remain aloof and difficult.  “If you want you can hang out here a while, I have some experience supervising little girls.”  Fulda rolled her eyes and Roni smirked, glad to have gotten under her skin.  “I’ll be over here, if you need anything just tug on my shorts and I’ll help you, ‘kay?”  She dismissed herself from the conversation, then went back to leafing through Gina’s grimoire.

The first thing Fulda looked at was the giant terrarium occupying one wall.  She took a cautious step forward, just enough to confirm that she was seeing our silhouettes behind the glass.  “Um.  What the fuck is that?”

“Aw, you’re so curious, I love it when kids ask so many questions!” Roni replied, making sure to mock her before giving a real answer.  “That’s our tiny person colony.  Gina shrinks people, then sticks them in there to have fun with them later.  Cool, isn’t it?”

Fulda’s eyes bulged.  “She does what?” she shouted, turning towards Roni.  Finally, she noticed the book open in her lap and immediately recognized it.  “Where… Where did you get that book?”

Roni checked the cover as though she needed to confirm she was reading an arcane tome written in an ancient, forgotten language.  “This one?  Gina gave it to me.”  She flipped it back and forth carelessly.  “Cool, huh?  It’s a bit above your reading level, but it has some cool pictures if you want to see.”

“I’m the one who gave it to her,” Fulda growled.  “I taught her everything in it.”  She took a second to calm herself and unclench her jaw to keep from strangling Roni.  “How long has she been maintaining this… tiny person colony?”

“I first came into the Goddess’s graces two years ago as one of those tiny people,” Roni explained, giving a much more elaborate answer than expected, “but Gina saw my devout worship and made me a Goddess, too.  There’s someone who says he’s been in there almost six years though, so she’s been doing this for a while.”

Though she clearly wanted to rail against all the nonsense about Gina being a goddess, Fulda just quietly repeated, “Six years?  That means…”  She spun back to face the terrarium, then rushed toward it.  Pressing her face against the glass, she looked at all the tiny people spread throughout the transparent tank.  “Little dude, are you in here?  Wave to me so I can find you!”  The glass rattled with her voice while the words echoed between the panes.

I pulled one arm from around Akane’s leg and began waving it back and forth as broadly as I could, trying to get her attention.  Akane saw my efforts to get noticed and joined in, raising both her arms as high as possible and moving them as though she were trying to direct an aircraft.  Fulda’s cold eyes started on the other side, scanning over the rest of the tiny population on her way over to us.  Most of them ignored her entirely, with a couple giving her a curious glance while her face loomed over them.  They probably thought it was a trap and that Fulda intended to crush anyone who volunteered, and maybe it was.  I had nothing left to lose, though.

When she finally got to me she stopped and gave a wide smile, revealing a set of universally straight, bright white teeth between her pink lips.  “There you are!” she exclaimed, making the panes shake again.  “And I’m guessing you’re not the one in a schoolgirl uniform, so you must be the smaller one clinging to her leg.  Some things never change, huh?”  She chuckled at her own joke, then stood and flipped open the tank’s top hatch.  “I’m going to pull you out for a bit so we can catch up.”

Fulda leaned in and snaked her arm through the hole, reaching her hand toward me.  Akane slowly rotated while I hugged her leg tightly, carrying me along for the ride.  When she had turned all the way around Akane ducked, getting out of the way of Fulda’s grabbing fingers.  Two enormous fingertips sandwiched me, and once I was sure their hold was firm enough to support me I let go of the leg I had been using for support.

Carefully Fulda withdrew me from the terrarium, moving slowly that she would be sure not to lose her grip.  When I had been completely extracted she dropped me into her free hand, which was wide open and waiting for me.  The skin had hardened significantly over the past several years, likely related to the muscles that now rippled all over her body.

“Hi there!” she boomed, unable to contain her enthusiasm.  I was taken aback by the volume, but her voice’s deep rumbling and raw power was nothing new to me anymore.  “Long time no see!  I mean, I’ve seen you in the Snaps Gina sends me, but that’s not the same as holding you in the palm of my hand.”

“What sort of… Snaps… did she send you?” I asked.  The app had just gotten big right before I got small so I knew how it worked, I simply did not remember Gina recording any.

“She sent tons of her doing stuff with you!” Fulda replied.  “Dangling you over her mouth, watching you dodge her fingers… oh, there was a really cool one where you were standing on a dime and slowly got smaller until the camera couldn’t see you anymore!”  We had very different ideas of what was cool.  “I replied to all of them, did Gina not show those to you?”

“No, can’t say that she did,” I answered.  “She must have been too busy thinking up new ways to torment me and apparently show them off to you.”

“That’s a shame.”  Fulda paused for a second, looking me over.  “You look really good, though!”

“Do I?”

“Yeah, have you not looked in a mirror?”  She looked around for something she could use to show me, then realized the only mirror was the full-length one Gina used to get ready in the mornings.  “You got buff, dude!  You’re shredded!  If I’d known that years of being tiny would do this to your body I would’ve shank you when I first learned how.  Hell, I would’ve taken you with me to college!  What’s your secret?”

“Gina makes me compete with the other shrunken people to climb her legs and the last one up gets eaten,” I said, punctuating it with a shrug.  “The threat of dying and being digested does wonders for your motivation.”  Fulda did not know how to respond to my frank description of what I had been through, so I decided to press her for information.  “So, where’s your boyfriend?”  Her only response was a confused look, so I elaborated.  “You know, one of the guys you were going to meet at college, so you gave me to Gina like an old pair of shoes you had grown out of?”

“Oh, that,” Fulda answered, as though she had forgotten bout the whole thing.  “That didn’t exactly go as planned.  It turns out not a lot of guys want to date a woman who’s got a few inches on them and can deadlift three of them.  There were a couple, but they weren’t exactly into the idea of me as a giantess and only realized it too late.”  She bit her lip while thinking.  “There really isn’t a lot that’s gone as planned.”

“How do you mean?”  This was a first: I was about to hear Fulda admit she was wrong about something.

“Everything since I taught Gina how to shrink people has gone pear-shaped,” Fulda explained.  “You have to believe me, I never thought she would abuse you like she did.  I half expected that I’d be looking for you on the bottom of one of her shoes.  And now she’s making her friends gigantic, keeping shrunken people in a tank, declaring herself a deity… it’s all gotten way out of hand.”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” I asked.  “She’s only going to get worse as she gets older.”

“I don’t think I can stop her,” Fulda admitted, “she’s my sister, even if she is a monster.”  She leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially, hoping that Roni would not overhear.  “I can take you with me when I leave, though.  You don’t deserve to be treated like this.”

My eyes brightened, and for the first time in years I felt genuine hope.  “Really?” I asked.

“Yes, really,” Fulda confirmed.  “I mostly came back to check on you, she hasn’t sent anything with you for a couple weeks and I was worried.  I’ll just need a distraction to keep her and that giant bitch busy when she gets back.”

I smiled.  “We’ll think of something, I’m sure.”

Gina and her friends stood near center court, watching the freshman basketball team leave after practice.  The ones she was looking for had not shown up yet, and she was starting to worry they had skipped or been cut.  She hated to think they had gotten changed into their uniforms for nothing.

Once the rest of the team had left five stragglers came out of the locker room, all huddled together.  They walked along the wall toward the exit, talking amongst themselves and joking as they went.  Gina did not remember them being quite so small, but that would only work to her advantage.  It would be the perfect test for her friends.

“Okay, now remember: on the signal just do what I told you and they’ll be bite-sized before you know it,” she said, then began walking toward the gaggle of students.  The rest of her friends followed, sashaying their way across the floor toward their targets.  Despite the racket of their enormous feet on the wood none of the boys paid attention to them.

Gina slammed her hips against the wall and leaned her body into it, causing the lead boy to run straight into her legs.  He gasped and looked up at Gina towering over him, unable to believe he had bumped into her.  She smiled and gave him a wave and he spun around only to see Shelby leaning into the wall behind them, blocking their way back.  Julie and Ashley pushed them back, grinning while they cowered against the wall and shook in fear.  Not a single one of them was taller than their legs.  “It’s the senior girls!” one of them shouted once he realized what was going on.

“Relax, we’re not here to hurt you!” Gina said, leaning over the nearest boy.  Covering him with her shadow did nothing to make him feel better, causing him to quiver under her presence.  “We’re here to help you, isn’t that right girls?”  Her friends agreed, never taking their eyes off the diminutive boys at their thighs.  “We were watching you practice, and you’re all really good!  None of you ever get to play though, so we thought we’d let you show your stuff against us.”  The boys turned to each other, clamoring with excitement.  “There are only four of us though, meaning we’re down a girl, so we’ll need to do something to… even the odds.”

That was the signal.  All of them moved in, pressing the boys together while they got even smaller.  They looked up at Gina and her friends, marveling at how tall they were all of a sudden.  Once they were shorter than their knees, though, they realized something was wrong and began to scream.  The team continued dwindling, their screams getting more high-pitched, but it wasn’t until they were down to their ankles that one of them tried to run.  Ashley slammed an enormous Adidas in his path, knocking them down, then swept her foot forward and threw him back into the throng of shrinking men.

The girls were not satisfied until each of them was miniscule, dwarfed by their shoes at not even an inch tall.  Gina raised her sneaker and held it over the group, letting them gaze in fear at the sole of her tremendous shoe hanging over them before stomping it down in front of them, keeping them off their feet.  “This looks a little more fair,” she declared, striking an intimidating pose over the tiny men.  “So, let’s play a small game, with some stakes.  We’ll play to six, just six points.  If you guys win we’ll grow you back, with a bonus.  But if you lose, you’re ours, forever.  Be sure to try your hardest!”

Gina went to get a ball while her friends spread out over one half of the court.  The shrunken boys were still panicking, unsure what to do when Gina stepped over them.  They had a brief meeting and came to the conclusion that this must be some sort of hilarious joke they were playing, and they should do their best to meet them halfway.  Certain that nothing bad would happen to them they ran onto the court, setting up a zone defense since there was no way they could cover people ten feet taller than them.

Eric had the misfortune of dealing with Gina first.  She drove at him, dribbling the ball and slamming her shoes on the court with each step as she ran forward.  He put out his arms in a vain attempt to block her, but when she drew closer it became evident she was not going to humor him.  Each time the ball hit the ground he felt the quake, and every one of her steps made his insides turn around.  When the giantess was on top of him he looked up, only to find his view blocked by a gargantuan shoe sole.  With a light crunch he was flattened, and Gina easily dropped the ball in for two.

Roger waited for the ball to stop bouncing before he even got close to it.  Even then he did not feel safe with it rolling around, since it was many times larger than him and there was no way he could stop it.  Finally, when it was nearly stopped, he felt brave enough to approach, running into it and trying to shove it away.  The instant he stopped touching it, however, Shelby yelled out “Steal!” and charged forward, tearing the ball off the ground.  Suddenly exposed, Roger looked up at the red-headed titaness, finding himself in clear view of her green eyes.  She raised a humongous hand to her shoulder and brought it down, swatting Roger as though he were a fly before scoring her goal.

Ken did not want to go near the ball.  He saw what happened to the others who tried to actually play the game, and he wanted no part of it.  Unfortunately, he could only stall the game for so long before one of the giantesses got impatient.  Julie, the black-haired vixen, picked up the ball while he watched, then calmly dribbled it toward the basket.  She leapt into the air completely unnecessarily and dunked it, hanging onto the rim long enough that it bent toward her.  Finally she let go, falling right on Ken’s head and pulverizing him when she landed.

Lyle had done nothing and wanted nothing to do with anything.  He only wanted to escape.  That prospect seemed unlikely, however, when Ashley took a step forward, trapping him beneath her feet.  He looked up at the towering woman while she glowered at him, unable to even see beyond the monumental legs around him.  She squatted down, bringing her face terrifyingly close, and he tried to run.

It was too late.  Ashley’s hand easily caught up to him, pinching the back of his jersey, and she lifted him from the floor.  She let him dangle a moment, still trying to run, laughing at his legs pumping uselessly in the air before standing.  By the time she got him to her face he was already crying.  “Hey little fella!” she boomed, her jubilation roaring against his ears.  “What’s your name?”

He sniffled and faced her, trying to say something.  Her bright blue eyes overwhelmed him, and he saw how easy it would be for him to slip between her pouty lips.  She gave him a shake and repeated the question, more insistently.  “L-Lyle,” he managed to stammer, little more than a whimper in the face of the giantess.

“Hi Lyle!” Ashley leaned in and shouted, extending her tongue while drawing out his name.  He flinched, but there was nowhere to go.  “Are you excited to be my little pet, Lyle?”

“N-not really,” he managed in between sniffles.

Ashley grinned and closed her fingers around him.  “You better get excited, you little shit,” she said.  “Because we’re going to have fun, you and I.”  He let out one last whine before Ashley encased him in her fist, sealing her claim.

Rob saw how this was going to go and wanted no part of it.  He turned and ran for the exit, unsure what he would do when he got outside but willing to take his chances.  The ground rumbled and he heard a tremendous crash, but put it out of his mind.  It wasn’t someone coming for him, he told himself, as he continued his slow movement toward the exit.

A gigantic black shoe stomped down in front of him, turning his knees to jelly so that he stumbled into it.  Rob slowly recovered while the giantess remained still, considering the tiny man at her feet.  He looked up and saw her ankle several stories above him, with her dark eyes glaring at him from beneath a tuft of black hair.  “Oh please oh please oh please don’t hurt me,” he begged, falling to his knees and pleading up at her ankle.

Julie did not hear his cries for mercy, and even if she did she was unable to muster the sympathy for him.  She simply leaned over and swiped at the floor, easily overwhelming the tiny man with her fingers.  His tiny body slipped into her grip and she formed a loose fist around him, holding him tight.  While he struggled inside her hand she grinned, amused by how pathetic he was in her grip.

“Good game, everyone!” Gina congratulated her friends when the last shrunken man had been dealt with.  “Now, let’s all go home and have fun with our new friends.  I want to hear a lot of stories tomorrow morning about what you did with your tiny men!”  They left while the two still alive struggled in the grasps of their respective giantesses, unsure of their futures, while the girls dreamt of what they would do to them.

For quite some time Fulda held me in her hand, smiling down at me while we chatted about everything we had been up to for the past several years.  Naturally, since she had not spent the entirety of it trapped inside a glass cage at the mercy of a megalomaniacal teenager, Fulda had the lion’s share of stories.  It sounded like she had a lot of fun at college while I became slowly more resigned to the living hell she had condemned me to, even if she had not done it on purpose.  Apparently throwing wild sorority parties every couple of months did not interfere too much with her academics, and she was even able to exploit some of the people she had shrunk to build her senior project, which resulted in her graduating with honors.

Gina was later than usual, so to help fill the time I made it clear to Fulda why she needed to be stopped.  I told her about some of the people who were mercilessly crushed or eaten by her sister, the ones I could remember at least, and introduced her to a few of my fellow cohabitants who had yet to scorn me.  They could still be saved, I insisted, even if she could not take them with her.  There was no need for them to suffer any more, and finally introduced her to Akane, who had an eye-opening conversation with Fulda.

“You’re the one my little dude was clinging to when I got here, right?” Fulda asked, holding Akane in her other hand.  I did not know by what right she claimed I was hers considering she gave me to Gina with her full endorsement, but I did not particularly feel like calling her on it.  She had agreed to take me away from here, after all, and I did not want to make her reconsider the deal.

“Yep, that’s me!” Akane answered.  She was surprisingly at ease between Fulda’s large, calloused fingers, somehow maintaining her bubbly disposition.

“Hm.”  Fulda looked her over, turning her this way and that while inspecting her.  “Didn’t know the little guy had a thing for Asians,” she said when she had finished.  “And you’re a little small for his type, too.  I guess it’s all relative though, and you’re like three times his height.”

“By Goddess Gina’s grace!” Akane instantly replied with an irrepressible amount of exuberance.

Fulda burst out laughing, carefully aiming so that she would not blast either of us with her spit.  “I’m sorry, did you-“ she remembered that Roni was still in the room and giving her a nasty look for playing with Gina’s “toys,” and quickly brought her voice back down to a whisper.  “Did you just call my little sister a goddess?”

“Yes, of course I did!” Akane answered.  “She cast out Jessica the Shiftless and raised Veronica to rule alongside her as a result of her unwavering faith.”

Fulda seemed unsure how to respond when faced with someone who earnestly believed the tripe Gina had been feeding us for years.  “So, first of all,” she began, “Jessica wasn’t ‘cast out,’ she went to college.  Gina had absolutely nothing to do with her leaving.  Secondly, what makes you believe Gina’s any sort of goddess, aside from her telling you so?”

Akane thought about it for a moment, shifting uncomfortably between Fulda’s powerful fingers.  “Well… she’s our goddess.”  Recognizing that she had just given the textbook version of a tautology, Akane rushed to reinforce her assertion.  “She brings us food, controls who lives and dies, bathes us in light, and controls the sizes of all people in her domain.  She alone sits in judgment over us, and rewards or punishes us as she sees fit.”

Fulda smirked.  “You realize how ridiculous that sounds, right?” she whispered.  “She gives you a slice of bread every couple days and can work a light switch and she’s a goddess?  Her temper tantrums where she crushes your friends make her divine?  And using a skill that I taught her is, what, how she manifests her blessings?”

“But… when she made me one of her high priestesses, she gave me the power to use it, too.”  I could see the fissures in Akane’s faith in Gina deepening.  She was no true believer, I knew, since she had shown me unprecedented levels of kindness and genuinely felt bad for nearly killing me: someone who received succor from Gina’s words and attitude would have utterly crushed me instead of feeling pity.  It was entirely possible she thought Fulda was testing her, and became more sure by the moment that she was not going to report her apostasy to Gina.

Fulda’s eyes widened at that admission.  “Wait, she taught you how to shrink people, too?” she asked, not believing what she heard.

“And grow them!” Akane helpfully offered.  “It’s all in a book she gave me a while ago if you want me to show you!”

Fulda leaned in close to Akane until her glossy pink lips were nearly touching her.  “I’m the one who taught her how to do it,” she said, then pulled back and looked over her shoulder at Roni, who was glancing at us every few seconds while she flipped through the grimoire, doing her best to appear unbothered.  “She teach her, too?”

“Yeah,” Akane answered.  Her enthusiasm was dissipating, which could only be a good thing.  “She’s teaching a bunch of her friends, too.  They’re all big like her now.”

“One thing at a time,” Fulda insisted.  “I can’t let Gina keep torturing these people, but I can’t take them with me either.  And I can’t fight my own sister, and even if I did that huge blond back there would just continue her reign of terror.”  A soft hum emitted from her throat while she thought it over.  “When she gets home, I’ll make you big.  Bigger than her, even.  That should be enough to protect you.  I need you to subdue her and make her small, about the size of one of the people in that cage, while I deal with the supposed exchange student.  After that, if everything goes right it’s up to you what happens.  Got it?”

“Got it!” Akane squeaked, throwing a salute up to Fulda.  It was a simple plan, about the best we could come up with on such short notice, without a lot of moving parts.  There were still a lot of things that could go wrong: Roni might have heard the whole thing, Gina might bring some friends home with her, one of them might get overpowered, or a dozen other things.  If it worked I would finally be out from under Gina’s thumb, but if it failed I expected to join the conspirators under Gina’s sole when she meted out swift retribution.

A door closing downstairs reverberated through the house, followed by thudding footfalls on the steps.  Only one set of footsteps I could discern, meaning Gina had come home alone.  Whatever had kept her two hours later than usual, she must have parted ways with her friends after. 

Fulda set us down by the white tips of her enormous Converse in anticipation of Gina’s arrival then stood and turned toward the door.  The rotation of her titanic body swung one of her shoes over us, blocking the sky with brown rubber diamonds for a moment.  When she was done she stood astride us, her massive legs towering above like a colossus.  With her looming over me like this I was almost able to forgive the whole “consigned to a living hell” thing while she prepared to meet her sister head-on.

The door swung open and Gina stepped through.  She stopped mid-stride, nearly stepping on the toe of Fulda’s shoe, and quickly adjusted herself.  “Well,” she began, looking down, “if it’s isn’t my so-called big sister.”  They had a brief stare-down, trying to out-stern each other from a few inches away.  Suddenly she cracked, smiling for a reason other than cruel satisfaction for once and let out an ear-piercing squeal.  “I’m so happy to see you!”

She leaned forward and wrapped Fulda in an enormous bear hug, shoving the shorter sister’s face into her stomach.  With seemingly little effort she lifted the dense body of corded muscle off the ground, then savagely shook her in the air.  Fulda’s fearsome shoes passed over Akane and me several times while they dangled in the air, each time threatening instant death if she were to be released at that moment.  At the very least that would obviate the need to go through with this plan, and one of us would be sure to live out the day.

Fortunately she put her down near the wall, completely missing the opportunity to crush us by accident.  Now that I had a clear view of the two of them, the difference was massive.  Gina thoroughly dwarfed Fulda, the latter not even reaching her chest, and had to crane her neck back to look at her.  I had not realized just how massive Gina had become over the past several years, and after a certain point it stopped mattering to me, but she must have towered over every single person without augmented height in the world.

“I’m so excited, it’s been years!” Gina boomed loudly enough in her excitement to make my ears ring.  “You look great!  Been hitting the gym to make up for how short you are, huh?”

“Something like that,” Fulda answered, brushing the question aside.  “You’ve certainly gotten tall.  What are you, ten feet now?”

“Ten and a half, actually,” Gina corrected her.  “And there’s no sign of it stopping any time soon!  The next time we see each other I’ll probably be able to fit you inside my shoe.”

“That’s… I’m happy for you, Gina.”

“Can you imagine it?  You, the big sister who used to tower over me when we were kids, the size of a bug to me!  And everyone else!  I’m so excited for it!”

“I’m… hm.”  Fulda was not quite sure what to make of this.  “You know I’m happy to see you and all, but I’m concerned.  You’re obsessed with your height, and I’m starting to worry that you’re abusing your powers.”

“And you don’t?” Gina countered.  “I remember the pictures and videos from your parties.  There were an awful lot of tiny men there, and you certainly didn’t look upset when you had one in your mouth.  Face it, everything I’ve done I’ve learned from watching you.”

“You’re taking it too far, though,” Fulda shot back.  “I never once thought of establishing a religion around myself, or turning them into a society of tiny people.”

Gina looked at the floor and spotted us, then grinned.  “Speaking of tiny people,” she began, ignoring Fulda’s accusations, “it looks like you’ve helped yourself to a couple of mine.  Interesting that the first thing you go for in my room is shrunken people, huh?”  She squinted down at us.  “Isn’t one of them your ex?  And the other is a girl I think he has the hots for!”

She took a lunging step forward so that she was only a few inches away from us, then squatted.  Her knees pushed out so that her stocking-clad knees loomed over us, and her enormous face was framed by her shapely thighs.  Gina gave Akana a playful poke with a humongous finger and giggled.  “Come on, let’s play with them together, it’ll be like old times!”

Fulda sighed.  At least Gina had made this easy for her.  “Yeah, we’ll play a game,” Fulda said.  “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”  Gina turned around to ask something, but Akane was already undergoing explosive growth.  In an instant she expanded to fill the space Gina was occupying, toppling her over with a great crash.  She continued to get larger, almost unbelievably so, while Gina’s legs splayed out in front of her, just barely missing me when one of her titanic legs slammed to the floor.

When Akane finally stopped growing she was colossal, easily the tallest person I had ever seen.  Her feet stopped expanding just when they were about to subsume me, leaving me standing at the heel of a brown loafer that resembled the Great Wall to me.  The black socks running up her calves were obsidian towers, topped with the shining marble towers of her thighs.  A brief flutter of her skirt showed that it would be enough to cover a whole town, but beyond that she was just incomprehensibly huge.  It reminded me of when Gina would shrink me even more for fun.

“What the fuck?” Roni shouted, followed by a loud rustle.  I turned to look if I could see anything, but Gina’s gargantuan thigh blocked my view.  Red and blue streaked by over my head while Fulda exploded into action, and I heard the hollow groan of the air being knocked out of someone’s lungs.  Hopefully Fulda’s blitz had worked and she was not about to be a stain beneath Roni’s shoes.

Once she overcame the shock of Akane’s sudden growth Gina sprung into action.  She swung one long, shapely leg around Akane’s ankles, nearly dropping its enormous weight onto me when it settled, then wrapped the other around her knees.  With a single movement she buckled her legs, toppling the giantess onto her.  Gina caught her was she fell and threw her upwards, slamming her head into the door as her legs slid by me.  While she was stunned Gina scrambled to get atop her, resting with all her weight on Akane’s lower back.

With Gina’s legs out of the way I could see what was happening in the rest of the room.  Roni was doubled over holding her stomach and wheezing for breath.  Fulda took a quick step back and lined herself up against the much larger woman.  She raised a foot off the ground and coiled it back, then snapped it forward, catching Roni on the chin.  While the blond staggered back Fulda pressed her advantage, charging forward to lay a shoulder into her hips.

Akane was having a much worse time with the plan.  Gina ground her butt into Akane’s back, making some vertebrae pop under the weight, then reached up to seize a handful of jet black hair in her long fingers.  She jerked her head back then slammed it into the floor, making all of Akane’s enormous body shudder.  A cruel laugh rang out from Gina’s lips.  “I should have smashed you in front of your locker instead of picking you up,” she boomed.  “Now I’ll have to beat you senseless and then toss you at Liz’s mercy.”  Akane gasped, apparently horrified by the prospect.

Fulda showed that her sculpted muscles were not just for show and heaved Roni into the air, bashing her head into the ceiling.  While she reeled Fulda fell backwards, suplexing Roni into the ground with an enormous crash.  The whole room shook and I fell against Gina’s knee from the shock, grabbing onto a thick nylon strand to remain standing.  Roni was not moving aside from some shallow breaths, still held tight around the waist by Fulda’s arms.  She had been knocked unconscious.

Gina was still toying with Akane, clearly in the dominant position.  She yanked at Akane’s hair again, making her moan as she tore at her scalp.  I had to do something.  Though both women were colossal in size and thoroughly immune to anything I could do, I could not stand by while Gina beat her face into a bloody pulp.  If she lost I was going to die anyway.  The least I could do was not die a coward.

After a deep breath I sprung up, using the elastic fibers I was holding onto as a springboard to help propel myself upward.  I grabbed onto Gina’s stocking and dug my feet against the fabric, then began to scale the towering thigh.  Years of training on this exact cliff had prepared me for just this moment, and I made swift progress on the ascent.  In only a few seconds I was halfway to her shorts, trying to ignore the whimpers coming from Akane while her body shook beneath Gina.

A pair of blue eyes peeked over the mountain face I was climbing.  “Oh, hello there,” Gina’s voice rumbled while she smiled maliciously.  In an instant her hand engulfed me, and two fingers pinched my sides.  She easily tore me away from her leg, her stocking slipping out of my fingers when my grip gave out, and lifted me to her face.  Gina could barely suppress her laughter while she looked at my puny body in her fingers as though she found my attempt to die a hero hilarious.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she asked.  Past her ear I saw Fulda still clutching a doll-sized Roni that was still shrinking in her arms.  Gina let go of Akane’s hair solely so she could poke me, then grinned.  “Are you seriously trying to fight me?”  Her gigantic face contorted in a sneer that was trying to fight the unbreakable smile.  “I really ought to crush you between my fingers right now and be done with it, but I have a much funnier idea.”  Akane wheezed, Gina’s weight making it difficult for her to breathe.

“Hey, Akane, you dumb bitch!” Gina shouted, the force of her voice blowing back my hair.  She leaned forward, drawing me past Akane’s ear, and gripped her by the throat with the other hand.  With a jerk she raised her face up and held me in front of one of her soft, dark eyes.  “I found your little boyfriend!  Yeah, I know you’ve been trying to steal him from me.  I’ve decided to let you have him, and a little snack before I hand you over to Liz.”

Gina slowly lowered me along Akane’s face, keeping pace with one of the tears falling from her eyes.  Though nothing looked broken, at least not from this close, even someone who had not seen the fight would surmise it did not go well for her.  A steady stream of blood poured out of her nostrils, and her bottom lip was split while the top one was already swollen. 

As Gina brought me toward her mouth Akane pressed her lips together.  “Oh come on, open wide!” Gina chided, leaning forward for leverage while she laid a palm on Akane’s chin.  She shoved me against Akane’s lips, pressing me into the soft, pink tissue.  Slowly her jaw parted, and I felt myself slipping further into her mouth.  Gina leaned forward a little more and pressed harder on her jaw and I slid up to my waist into her lips while a warm blast of copper-scented air hit me from her nose.

Suddenly Akane’s head shot back, ripping me out of her mouth and striking Gina square on her nose.  The surprised giantess’s fingers briefly went limp, letting me slip from between them.  I landed on the carpet, cushioned by its soft fibers, and looked at Akane looming over me.  She flashed me a confident grin then flipped over, whipping the ground around me with her long strands of hair.  Before Gina could recover she pulled a leg out from under her, pulled the knee to her chest, and planted her foot on Gina’s stomach.  With a firm push she kicked Gina off her and jumped to her feet.

Gina bumped against her dresser, and before she could stand up straight Akane was on her.  She hit her with a flurry of punches in the abdomen, then grabbed her by the bangs and pulled her to the side.  Akane stuck a foot into her path, causing her to trip over it and spill onto the floor with a cataclysmic quake.  In a second Akane was on top of her dropping onto Gina with a powerful aftershock that nearly smashed me with her knees so she could throttle the blond.

While Akane had her hands wrapped around Gina’s neck her anger began to manifest in different ways.  Amazingly, the pinned woman began to rapidly get smaller.  Gina tried to break the hold on her throat, but found that her increasingly tiny hands were useless.  Before long Akane had to let her go since there was not enough room for her hands, but Gina continued shrinking.  “What are you doing to me?  No!” Gina protested, her voice losing its roaring quality.  “No, please don’t shrink me!  I don’t want to be small!”  Her pleas were overtaken by sobs, but at the end I finally heard what Gina’s real voice is like for the first time since before I took Fulda to prom.

Akane stood and wiped the blood from her lip with the back of her hand, glaring down at Gina’s tiny body beside her shoe.  Fulda walked over, clutching the unconscious Roni in her hand, and bent over.  She opened her fist and deposited Roni beside Gina, then stood and looked up at her partner in battle.  “What happens now is up to you,” she said.  “Not only to them, but to the people in that tank.  Her chest heaving for breath, Akane offered Fulda a weak smile and flashed her the peace symbol before returning to glower at the former titanesses.

Fulda walked toward me, her feet slapping the ground with a series of rhythmic quakes.  When she reached me, she knelt and leaned forward so that she loomed over me.  “I saw what you did,” she said, fixing me with her cold blue eyes.  Grinning, she continued, “That was incredibly brave.  She could have swatted you like nothing, but you managed to turn the tide.  I’m impressed.”  Fulda’s hand descend toward me and she gently set a finger on either side of me, lifting me out of the carpet.  While she stood she concluded, “Let’s get out of here, I think they have some business to take care of.”  With that she left, carrying me out of Gina’s room the first time in years, and closed the door behind her.

Akane raised her foot and moved it over the two tiny women at her feet.  Even Gina did not move out from under it, too pathetic to save her own life.  It would have been easy to simply lower the sole of her shoe onto them, smash them beyond recognition and grind them into the carpet.  Gina had certainly done so to hundreds of people over the years, and Roni was a suitable protégé for her.  If she crushed them now it would no doubt save a lot of trouble later and rid the world of two would-be tyrants.

She couldn’t, though.  If she took revenge like this she would not be any better than them.  Akane bit her split lip and pulled her foot away, looking at the two helpless, tiny women at her feet.  Maybe some time as one of the tiny people they loved to torment would give them some perspective, possibly even rehabilitate them.  She bent over and picked one up in each hand, then moved over to the terrarium she had lived in earlier that day.  Carefully she set them down in front of the steps of her old house, then closed the hatch.

Akane woke up smiling.  Every day that she woke up outside of that terrarium was a good day, as far as she was concerned.  She stretched, her ankles sticking out of the covers and sliding over the foot of the bed.  Gina was definitely tall, but she was coming due for another extension of her bed, and at eleven feet Akane’s body was simply too long for it.  Still, she fit on it better than everything else in the house.  Either her former captor never used anything outside of her room, or she was comfortable with everything else being half the size she needed.

She slipped her feet off the side of Gina’s old bed and stood, shivering when the sudden chill hit her legs.  Akane had taken to sleeping in her overshirt and socks, eschewing the skirt in favor of being able to rest under the covers, and after a couple days had neglected to put it back on entirely, not seeing the point if she was just staying in the house.  Her bare legs adjusted to the house’s colder temperature quickly enough, and she liked not being constricted by having her shirt tucked in.

A small house on the nearby desk erupted with noise while Akane looked around, and she turned her eager brown eyes to it.  Every morning without fail, as though she woke early just so she would know when to start, Roni would make a racket right after Akane got out of bed.  She knew Roni was unhappy with the situation, and she was not that satisfied with it either.  However, it was the only way to ensure everybody’s safety, and checking in on her made a nice, invigorating start to every morning.

Akane crossed over to the desk with two strides, with Roni’s vociferous complaints getting more intense as she approached.  She placed her wide palm on the run-down house she had pulled out for Roni to live in, the holes patched up with corrugated cardboard glued to the side.  Slowly, careful not to knock off any of the makeshift repairs, she lifted the roof off, exposing a furious tiny woman yelling at her from inside.

“I don’t deserve to be treated like this!” the shrunken woman yelled up at Akane towering over her.  “I am a goddess, do you hear me?  A goddess!  I demand you grow me back this instant!  It is my right and my duty to rule over the tiny people in this room, and you must honor that!”  Roni’s shouting turned into inarticulate screeching as she ran out of demands to make.

Akane leaned in and let her face fill Roni’s view for a moment, bringing a stop to her apoplectic fit.  It was like she forgot how huge Akane was compared to her every night, and it took the implicit threat of her enormous face up close to remind her.  She gave her a gleeful smile, legitimately glad to see that she was still okay.  Around bedtime Roni had a tendency to be overcome with despondency, and Akane was worried she might hurt herself.

“Good morning to you too, Veronica!” Akane said, her voice overwhelming Roni’s ears.  “You know I don’t like keeping you in there any more than you like being in there, but it really is for the best.  If I let you out you and Gina will just regrow each other, and she’ll start her reign of terror all over again!  I need to make sure you can both be restrained before I grow even one of you back, I’ve told you that before.”  She stood back up and grabbed the roof for Roni’s house.  “Now be good!  I’ll bring you some steamed veggies later to make sure you’re eating right.”  Akane slid the roof back on and made sure it was secure before walking away.

With three more bounding steps Akane was in front of the terrarium that had been her home merely one week before.  There were fewer people in it now, but still more than Akane would like.  She could only return one person to their previous size each day, so she picked the ones who had been in the longest so they could go back and be with their families.  It was the least she could do, but she still wished she could do more.

Akane practically knelt so that she would not appear overly threatening to the people stuck behind glass.  “Good morning, Kimberly!” she said, waving at the tiny woman nearest her.  “You’re looking especially cute today!  And Natalie, I you just look beautiful this morning!”  She went down the line, greeting and complimenting each person she had yet to rescue.  It was a pleasant change from Gina’s torment and dehumanization, she thought.  Some of them had not heard their real names for months and were shocked to be called something other than “tiny” or “bug.”

At the end of the row Akane saw a tiny, sullen blond pretending not to notice the gigantic face hovering inches away from her, separated only by a pane of glass.  “Good morning, Gina,” she said.  There was significantly less exuberance in her voice when addressing the former self-proclaimed goddess.  “I’m glad to see you well.” 

Gina’s head snapped to face Akane and she stared tiny daggers with her blue eyes.  “Fucking drop the act Akane, you giant bitch!” she spat.  “I know you hate me more than anyone else in here, because you know that you’re nothing without me!  I made you what you are, you deserve to be a bug at my feet worshipping me!  If you were still in here I’d shrink you down and make you live in my stockings!”

“Gina, I know you’re trying to hurt me, and I wish you wouldn’t,” Akane replied.  “You don’t have to be this mean, vile person that you’ve become.  I know that deep down inside you there’s a good person, you just need to let her out.”

“There are lots of good people inside me,” Gina retorted.  “I swallowed them whole.”  She walked forward and pressed herself against the glass, comical in her attempt to appear menacing.  “I’d chew you for a bit, though.  I want you to suffer.”

Akane looked at Gina sadly.  “I’m really sorry you feel that way, but I know you don’t mean it.  Some day you’ll be really embarrassed about how you talked to me, but until then you need to stay in there for everyone’s safety.”  Gina went back to silently glowering, so Akane stood and reached through the hatch to grab the empty metal bowl of vegetables and tiny chicken cubes she had put in there yesterday.  She knew that the tank’s interior was in serious need of fresh air, and many of its longer-term inhabitants were suffering from malnourishment after having nothing to eat but slices of wheat bread for so long.

There was a knock at the door before Akane could turn away from the tank, and a voice from the other side shouted, “Gina, where the fuck have you been?  We haven’t seen you in days!”  The door was unlocked, so the interlopers barged in.  Shelby, Julie, and Ashley spilled through the doorway, ducking underneath the frame, then stopped in their tracks.

“Who the hell are – holy shit, is that Akane?” Shelby asked upon seeing the gigantic woman in the middle of the room.  “You’ve been missing for months, everyone thought you ran away or got kidnapped or something!”

“No, I’ve been here,” Akane answered simply without elaborating.

“Why are you at Gina’s house and not at home with your family or something?” Shelby replied.  “They’ve probably given you up for dead.”

“Someone has to look after them.”  Akane gestured to the tiny people housed in the terrarium.  “They have families too, and I’d like to make sure they get home.”

“You?” Shelby asked.  “Where’s – Gina?!”  She spotted the tiny blond dressed in all black at the back of the tank.  She rushed over to her and pressed her nose against the glass, pointing at her.  “Hey everyone, come here!  Gina’s tiny!”  Julie and Ashley rushed over, crowding Shelby so that they could gawk at their shrunken friend.

“Hey Gina!” Julie shouted, drawing out each syllable.  “What’s it like being so tiny?”

“Wow!  How’d you get so small?” Ashley chimed in.

“Thank fuck you three are here!” Gina exclaimed, looking at them in amazement.  “Get me out of here!”  Shelby gleefully reached in through the hatch and carefully pinched the back of Gina’s shirt then slowly lifted her out of the terrarium.  She dangled Gina in front of her face, smiling.  “Now, make me big again so I can give that bitch Akane what she deserves!”

“Hm, nah,” Shelby shot back.  Gina’s jaw dropped, and she stared in surprise at her enormous friends.  “I think I speak for all of us when I say that it’s really funny how puny you are.  We won’t be growing you back any time soon.”

“What?  No!” Gina cried.  She had created three enormous monsters, and now it had come back to bite her.

“Yes!” Shelby came back, mocking her tiny friend.  Her eyes were wide and manic while she watched Gina dangle beneath her fingers, struggling futilely to get away.  She batted Gina with one of her fingers, starting her swinging back and forth while screaming in terror.

Shelby lifted Gina up and held her in front of one of her emerald eyes.  “All this excitement has worked up quite an appetite,” she declared, licking her lips.  “I could go for a snack right about now.”  She began tilting her head back and moving Gina above her, dangling the tiny woman over her lips while she opened her mouth.

“No, please Shelby!” Gina begged.  “We’re friends, remember?  I taught you how to shrink people!  I gave you a tiny boyfriend!  I gave you Kristie on a silver platter, just please don’t eat me like you ate her!”  Shelby wagged her tongue back and forth while Gina looked down into her cavernous mouth.  She saw Shelby’s uvula and began to weep, then screamed when the enormous redhead let go.  Gina plummeted toward Shelby’s mouth, shrieking the whole way.

Shelby snapped her lips shut just in time to give Gina a soft landing.  The other two burst into laughter while she fought hard to keep her mouth closed so the shrunken woman would not accidentally slip inside.  Just before she could no longer keep it shut she plucked Gina off her lips, giving her vertigo while she rushed her away from her mouth.

“I wouldn’t eat you, Gina!” she proclaimed, holding her puny friend in front of her.  “You’d be no fun in my stomach.”  Shelby lowered Gina down to the carpet while the puny woman protested.  She looked around in confusion, unsure if this was real.  Why was this happening?  Why were they tormenting her instead of helping her?  She had made them giantesses, and this was how they repaid her?

Gina settled down into the carpet, its long, soft fibers coming up to her knees.  Her three friends formed a gigantic wall, looking down at her maniacally.  She could not even climb onto their shoes she was so puny, and tears continued streaming down her cheeks while she looked up at her towering friends.  “Please!” she cried.  “You can’t do this to me!”

“Oh yes we can,” Ashley boomed, slipping a socked foot out of her Adidas.  “It’s like you told us: we can do whatever we want to tiny people, they’re really just bugs.”  She stepped forward, hitting Gina with her foot and knocking her over.  Ashley set her sole down atop her friend and laughed at her weak struggles.

Gina saw Ashley’s foot coming but could do little to stop it.  The great white behemoth overwhelmed her while she screamed, and she was bowled over.  When it pinned her down she tried to beg and plead with her friends to let her go, but only got a mouthful of cotton for her trouble.  She tried to wiggle free, but the enormous foot was simply too large and had her completely pinned.

Akane watched helplessly while the three tormented Gina.  She wanted to stop it, but there were three of them and only one of her, and after her struggle with their new victim she hardly wanted to try the odds.  Sadly shaking her head, she left to go get more food for the terrarium. 

I stood in Fulda’s palm, looking up into one of her icy blue eyes.  She grinned and gave me a playful nudge with her finger.  “So, how’s it feel?” she asked.  “Being free, I mean.”  Fulda was sitting on a bed, excitedly talking with me while waiting to leave.  The whole time since she had rescued me from Gina’s house I was in shock and too skittish for her to hold.  Now that I had calmed down, this was the first chance we really had to discuss anything.

We had been holed up in a hotel for the past couple of days.  It turned out Fulda had been understating the level of concern she had for me when I stopped appearing in Gina’s videos and flown out to check on me, even going far enough to rent a car.  She had expected the visit to last a lot longer though, and her flight back was not for several days.  Unwilling to pay for it to be changed she simply got a room and settled in until it was time.

It was like living in a palace for me.  The first night Fulda drew me a bath in the sink and let me sit in it as long as I needed, watching to make sure I didn’t drown.  Layers of grime I had no idea were on me sloughed off, and for the first time since I could remember I felt clean.  Fulda also shared her food with me, and after what felt like a lifetime of bread crusts her healthy diet was an invigorating feast – she even let me have a sip of her wine!  At nights she laid me on a pillow then crawled into the other bed, letting me have some time away from being forced to share someone’s bed.

“I… I don’t know,” I answered.  “I’ve been Gina’s ‘boy toy’ for so long I’ve forgotten about anything else.  I just wanted to be out of her clutches, I never thought about what I’d do after.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it.”  Fulda was going to great pains to keep her voice quiet and gentle.  “You can crash with me for a while!”  I have her an incredulous look and she laughed.  “No, I’m serious little guy!  I’ve got a really nice place and some tiny houses left over from my senior project, and you’re so small you barely eat anything.  I’ll even set you up with a nice girl from my sorority, the Gammas love tiny men like you!”

I sniffled.  “You… you would do that?”

Fulda gently ruffled my hair with a fingertip.    “Dude, it’s the least I can do.”  I leapt up and grabbed Fulda’s finger, wrapping it in a tight hug.  “Seriously, you’ve been through hell.  If I’d known my sister would go off the deep end like that I just would’ve kept you in a jar for a bit or something instead of giving you to her.”

“Thank you,” was all I could manage in my emotional state.  Everything was happening so fast I could hardly deal with it. 

“Well, we’re not home yet,” she said, pinching me around the chest.  Gently she pried me off her finger.  “We’ve got to get you through airport security first.”  Her hand began lowering me into her stocking and I froze up.

“No!” I shouted.  “Don’t put me in your stocking!”  She stopped and turned me to face her, furrowing her brows.

“But I thought you loved when I wore stockings?” Fulda asked, looking very confused.

“You can wear them, just… don’t put me in one.  Please, I’m begging you.”

Fulda shrugged her broad shoulders.  “Gina really fucked you up, huh?”  Surprisingly it wasn’t Gina who did it to me, but she was a root cause.  “Hm.  I can’t just carry you through without drawing a bunch of attention, and if I put you in my bag you’ll get fried by the x-rays

Fulda was silent while mulling it over, then suddenly snapped her fingers with a loud crack.  “I’ve got it!” she exclaimed, reaching behind her head.  When she pulled her hand back the blue ribbon from her hair was clutched between her fingers while she pulled it loose.  She shook her head back and forth, letting her hair fall down her back, then turned her attention bac to me.  “Don’t worry, I did this a few times in college so I know how to do it safely.  I’ll tie you to my thigh with this ribbon, and if some jerk security guard tries to look up my skirt to find you I’ll act offended and threaten to call the real cops!”

“If you think it’ll work,” I replied.  “Just… not a stocking.”

“Don’t worry, you’ve made that clear,” she said, lowering me down her body.  Slowly she pulled up the hem of her skirt, then slid me up the inside of her thigh.  Her intoxicating scent was all around me, and she had a fingertip linger on me to pin me against her bulging thigh.  Carefully she slid the ribbon under my armpits and pulled it tight, holding me securely against her while leaving my arms free.  She tied it in a knot, making sure it would not come undone, then pulled her hands away.

Fulda kept her skirt hiked up so that she could check out the work she had done.  “All good down there?” she asked.

“Never better!” I shouted, looking up her towering body.  I gave her a thumbs-up and she smiled, then dropped the skirt over me like a curtain.  She began walking, swinging me back and forth with her gait while her Converse slapped against the carpet.  Though I had no idea what the future had in store for me, it had to be better than where I had been.