“Mom, I am so fucking bored.”

    “Honey, this is Toronto. Go shopping or something. These meetings are going to take a while.”

    “I’ve already gone shopping.”

    “Well, you’re in a luxury suite in the most expensive hotel in the country. Ask room service for something fun to do.”

    “Like what? There’s nothing to do.”

    “I’ll be sure to tell Miss Veronica how sad you are in her hotel. I have to get back to the other shareholders now. Have fun honey.”

    Click.

    “Euch!” Autumn says and shuts cellphone. The suite is on the 70th floor of the Kali Corp. Hotel Toronto, and commands a perfect view of the city as the sky fades from deep blue to black and the skyscrapers turn into columns of glowing and twinkling lights. The rooms are stylish and modern, in tones of silver and white and purple and black, at once cool and inviting, sleek and lavish. And boring.

    Autumn is eighteen and heir to one of the largest robotics companies in the world. Her eyes are hazel and her brunette hair is streaked with blue and teal. She's thin and has several tattoos. She’s wearing a new black sequined tunic (750$), and a new pair of black sandals embedded with a large cluster of diamonds (9,000$). The jewels glitter darkly, refracting the black leather. She walks across the carpet of the spacious living room and flops into a padded chair, tossing her feet up onto a coffee table. Her shoes crash into a chess set and send it scattering across the table and onto the carpet. She starts playing on her phone and sighs.

     Something distracts her. A small noise. She looks around for the irritation, and spots movement on the table and carpet. She realizes the hotel's chess pieces are real little people. Fancy. The black and white forms, each roughly two inches tall and naked, are returning to the upturned chessboard, several of them limping. They are of slightly varying heights and wear stylized crowns to denote their pieces. Autumn leans forward and peers down her nose at the sound she was looking for.

     A little black man with a horse crown is wailing and rocking back and forth, clutching at his leg which is bent backwards and bleeding. A little bloody shard of white bone sticks out the side. A few other pieces are trying to console him.

     "Shut up," she tells him, frowning.

     The black King and Queen pat him and hush him worriedly, but he doesn't stop.

     "God, shut up," Autumn says and raises her foot over him.

     All the pieces gasp.

     Autumn stomps down on the little knight. She barely feels him crunch into the carpet, and grinds him under her heel a bit. The other pieces jump out of the way barely in time, and cry out in shock in terror, some spattered with blood.

     Hmm, that was fun. Autumn smiles wanly as the feeling under her foot and the sight of tiny blood brings back some childhood memories. She had outgrown playing with her little toys long ago, or so she had thought. Crushing this one brings back pleasant sensations.

***

    This wasn't supposed to happen. Black King had spent his entire life (five months) training for his position. He graduated from the program and earned his crown. He knows everything there is about the game. He can stand motionless for hours on end. He knows how to serve women with total grace and obedience. But he had never been taught anything about this.

   He had dodged at the last second, but hadn't avoided getting his knight's blood splashed on him. He stares, mouth agape, at the giant sandal before him grinding the body into the carpet. Something slides down his chest. It's a length of intestine. Everyone is either stunned or emptying their stomachs. The expression on the girl's face - a wistful smile. It was so out of place, so twisted.

     King reels as the girl lifts her foot again, revealing a flattened patch of flesh and gore in a red pool in the carpet. He sees Black Queen on the other side, on her back stricken in horror. King realizes now that he has always loved his Queen. She had made every motionless moment standing on that board seem so pleasant. He feels that he knows everything about her, even though they had never spoken. Once, he had dared to look over at her. They had locked eyes for a second, and they looked away quickly, but he had smiled then, and felt her smiling as well.
     Black Queen screams as the bloody sandal lowers over her, slowly this time. She shakes her head, cries, and the giant girl smiles down at her absently. King is cold, weak, helpless. The shoe presses Queen's tiny little arms down, and then squashes her breasts. Somewhere in the back of King`s head it occurs to him that this is the last he will ever see of his one true love, who shrieks and then crunches flat into the carpet beneath the shoe. The girl twists her foot slowly, and when she lifts it King sees an unrecognizable flap of bloody meat, strings of viscera hanging from it. He realizes vaguely that he is throwing up, and that he can`t see because of tears of in his eyes.

***

     Autumn inspects her sole. She giggles softly at what she has reduced the tiny bodies to. She had liked the muffled crunch that had risen from beneath her foot, liked the blood that had oozed so quickly into a stain. She breaths a happy little sigh puts her phone down. Autumn had found her entertainment for the night. She had rediscovered herself, perhaps. How had she ever forgotten how fun killing little toys is?

     She rests her heel on the upturned chess board, keeping her sole raised. "Clean off my shoe," she orders easily. She watches them, all scattered about, glancing at each other nervously. "You serve me, don't you?" She says. "Clean off my fucking shoe." Eventually a few brave ones come forward, five in total, and tentatively reach their tiny little arms to her shoe. She giggles at them. One of them pulls off a chunk of flesh and immediately doubles over and pukes, and she giggles more. She watches them work for a while, and then picks up her phone again and starts playing her game.

     Eventually she sighs and glances down again. "Get down underneath. Get all of it," she says. They look at each other, and eventually three of them get down on their knees and slowly disappear beneath her foot. She grins and lowers her foot slowly, admiring the sparkling of her shoe. The horrified calls of the tinies drift up to her ears. She can feel them this time, with several of them under her foot at once on the hard surface of the board. Autumn presses a bit more and feels them pop. Little guts spurt across the board, bright red on the black and white surface. Love it. She shoves her foot down and they scrunch completely, her shoe sliding and leaving a wide smear on the board. Strips of stretched pink flesh signify their remains. She laughs, and at that all the remaining  pieces flee.

     Autumn claps her hands with a squeal of delight and jumps up. "Yes, run!" she says as she raises her knee up high and stomps down hard on the nearest little person, who sprays out onto the carpet. She gives him a sharp twist and lifts her other foot, stomping down on another little piece. This one blurts all its guts out behind her heel. Autumn laughs. "I was afraid you little shits were going to get boring. This is so much better!" She slams her sandals down one by one, reducing the next two to pulp. She sees a small group running closely together. Two of them smush immediately, and the third one squeaks as his bottom half gets ground into the carpet. Autumn grins as she lifts her foot again and walks across the carpet.

***

     King runs. It's all he can do. The giant girl moves about overhead, the pillars of her legs swooping by around him in his panic-stricken haze. A foot lands briefly in front of him, and he sees white Bishop stuck to the shoe by his entrails, eyes still twitching. Her muscles move, her weight shifts, and then she's gone again. King runs. There's a door in the distance. He doesn't think about where it leads, he just needs to get anywhere but here. He ignores the ground shaking beneath his feet and the distant screams that get cut off and the massive giggles that flood the air around him. In front of him there are some pawns. They turn and see him, beckon him.

     Then he sees their postures change, sees them look up and start to flee. Before he knows whats happening, a shadow passes over him briefly, and then a giant leather-clad heel lands amongst them. The other foot swings in, smashing into the rest who go flying, and then hangs lazily in the air, gore-caked sole hovering huge and insolent before him, as if waiting to decide on which of the two pawns to squish first. She points her toe and presses the tip of her sandal down onto the stomach of one man, who vomits his insides like a fountain. She drags her toe back, smearing his legs into the carpet, before pressing onto his face, crunching the remainder of his body. She grinds him carefully beneath her toe.

     The other pawn crawls away desperately on his stomach, but she rests her bloody sandal right in front of his face. Before he can change directions, her other foot rests right behind him, trapping him between the two. She puts her hands on her hips, staring down, and lifts her toes, covering his body. She lets him squirm helplessly for a bit beneath her, before ripping him in half with her feet. Intestines lay coiled and scattered between her shoes. She turns, pivoting in place, scrunching his remains before walking off.

     Suddenly King stumbles on a gory patch of carpet and falls on his face. Beneath him is a mashed remains of a man, a flattened mockery of a corpse. The rough outline of human skin is stretched and distorted, and organs splay from one side of him like pressed flowers. His flattened face is almost recognizable except for the shattered jaw and the distended skalp where his skull split open. A shattered Rook hat is embedded into it. As King looks up, he sees the girl, her gaze passing him as she scans the room. Her face brightens for a moment and she walks toward him. King screams in terror as the giant leg stretches toward him, the sole covering him. He closes his eyes.

     But nothing happens. He's still here. She had stepped over him, and was pursuing the rest of the pieces through the room. She hadn't noticed him in the bloodstain. He's been pissing himself, and as King stands the urine mixes with the other man's blood dribbling slowly down his legs. He continues for the door.

***

     Autumn stalks around the room, stepping on all the little pieces. Finally it looks like there are only two left, running side-by side. She saunters up behind them, and knocks them over with her foot. She rolls them over with her toe so that they're facing up toward her, and she gives them a moment to think about it before stepping slowly on them under each foot. She feels them crush and then grinds them slowly, already scanning the floor. It looks close to thirty-two little stains in the carpet. There are probably a few hiding under the furniture. Maybe she would find them later.

    That was fun. She notices she has a little blood splattered on her toes. Time for a bath.

     She tosses her sequined tunic on a couch and walks to the bathroom door. There's a rectangular sunken bath in the center of the floor, over two meters long. Everything is made of veined marble, brightly lit by the mirrors and fading to warm shadow in the corners. One entire wall is half-tinted windows, overlooking the night city.

     Autumn bends to unzip the heel of her sandal but she stops when she notices a trail of tiny bloody footprints. A little man had gotten all the way here without her spotting him. He's running now, and Autumn straightens herself and she steps up behind him. He turns and trips onto the hard surface. She smirks and stands over him. It's the black King, the final piece. She thinks about saying something cheesy like "checkmate", but instead, she bends and finishes unzipping her sandal. Remembering a little game she played when she was younger, she pops her heel out and picks up the little man. She watches him wriggle in her fingers, prolonging the fun. "I'm going to put you in my sandal," she says, just to see him flail more. Eventually the sight becomes boring, and she drops him onto the sole of her sandal. She seems him scrambling in panic before disappearing under her heel, and she fastens her shoe up again. He wriggles still. Fun. She presses her heel down minutely, feeling him crack and his struggles weaken.

    After a while of seeing how many snaps and pops she can squeeze from his fragile body, she looks around the room again for something else to entertain her. She shouldn't have killed all the chess pieces so quickly. Oh well, she can always order up some more. They're always coming up with new specialized units that can please in any way, straight from the labs. They aren't openly growing men, she only knows this as a privileged family member of Kali Corp. Someone in her position had access to some very private new stock. Not that she cared about that now. She was just going to obliterate them anyway.

    She notices a sign on the bathroom wall that says she can call room service to get a bath prepared. She looks at the empty bath tub. She looks at her feet. After a moment she walks over to the telephone, and enjoys the warm, wet feeling of the King as he bursts.

     "How many does she want?" Jocelyn, the manager of Kali Corp. Hotel Toronto, says.

     "Enough to fill the bath in the suite," Valerie says, a valet. "Not like, full to the top. Just to cover the bottom I guess."

     "Well, we can't spare that many specialized units tonight, not with the conference. Did she specify her needs?"

    "She crushed the chess set."

    "She crushed the chess set?"

    "All over the carpet."

    Jocelyn puts her hand to her chin thoughtfully. "All right. We'll put in two hundred of ours and I'll call down to the pet store near the lobby and buy every single one there. Take some girls with you down there right now."

    "All of them? Even the... adoption ones?"

    "Do it. Just - don't tell them what they're being used for."

***

    "She wants to buy how many?" Cassie says. Cassie is the manager of the pet store.

    "All of them. We're sending some people down right away with a checque." Jocelyn says.

    "Oh my God... she's going to take care of them right?"

    "Yes, yes," Jocelyn says, clearing her throat. "I believe she has a... small village prepared, in her home. You don't don't have to worry about a thing."

    "And she wants them right now? In the night?"

    "...Yes. She wants to... show her appreciation for us by purchasing them here. They'll be on the plane tonight. She's very kind you know."

    "Yeah really... Okay. We'll get them ready for you."

    "Thanks for your cooperation, Cassie is it?"

    "Yes. Thank you."

    "Goodnight."

    Cassie hangs up the phone, and turns to Shanelle. "Yep," she says, "They're buying everything here. Lucky we stayed late."

    "Holy shit," Shanelle says. "We better get packing. Where the fuck is Miranda when you need her, eh?"

    "You didn't hear?" Cassie says.

    "Hear what?"

    "Oh. Well it's all really weird. Nobody's seen her in a week. That's why we're here late tonight."

    "Woah. That doesn't seem very much like her."

    "Just wait," Cassie says. "It gets weirder. So two days ago I get this letter. It's from Kali Corp. Like, its all official and stuff, and signed by, I dunno, the Head of... Security or something, I don't remember. And all it says is like, 'Miranda is not coming back to work anymore. Everything is fine. Blah blah. Sorry for the inconvenience. The End'."

    "Whaaat the hell?" Shanelle says. "That's fucking weird."

    "Right? Why would some Kali Corp official send me a letter for God's sake (who even uses letters anymore anyway?) if everything was all right? Obviously she's gotten into some pretty serious business. I just wish I knew what. I can't stand secrets like that, I always want to know whats going on. So mysterious."

    "Damn."

    "Yeah. Anyway. We better start packing everyone up here. Oh I can't believe it. All of the care cases are being adopted together! They're going to be so happy to have a real home again!"

***

    Ted was starting to really fucking freak out. This all felt completely off. The pit was massive, all marble, probably over a hundred feet tall and it was completely filled with people. There must have been a thousand of them. He looked around for some clue but it was all so confusing and crowded. He couldn't take two steps without bumping into someone. There was a valet woman up above lighting candles around the edge of the pit. They were nice candles.

    Ten minutes ago he the care workers at the shelter had said we were all going to a nice home. So what the fuck was this? None of his friends from his adoption group know what's going either. Most of the people here looked the same; young, sharp. They had tattoos like bar-codes on their backs. Like clones. And they were all semi-naked, wearing only the same white undergarments. He had seen lots of people like them at the shelter, but they were always in a different section and had never gotten to speak to them. 

    "Hey, buddy," he says, grabbing one of them. "What the hell is going on here?"

    The guy looks at him like he was an exotic animal or something. Ted glances down to make sure he hadn't suddenly turned purple or something, but no, he looked normal. It made him uneasy.

   The guy says, "Uh. I don't know exactly. I'm sure we'll find out our role soon."

   Our role? Ted sucks his teeth nervously. "So where are you from?" he asks. He always talked too much when he was nervous. Again, he's met with a weird look.

    "I... I don't know what you mean exactly. I was raised in batch 3169, cleaning division."

    "Batch 316... what is that? Are you tattoo guys from like... the army or something?"

   The man shakes his head helplessly. "Uh... how about you? What's your specialty? Are those clothes like for... what?"

   "My specialty? Like my job? I haven't had a job since I shrank 35 years ago. But I used to do robotics maintenance. We were lucky to get a job doing anything back then."

   The man is obviously still lost. "You... you shrank?"

   Ted stares at him. This was all way too fucked. What the hell was wrong with this guy? Of course he shrank, every man in the goddamn world shrinks. "I gonna go man," he says. "Have a nice life."

   "Okay," the guy says, and gives him a flustered smile.

   Ted bumps and shoulders his way through the masses toward the wall, looking for a corner to sit in or anything solid to lean on. As he nears the wall he stumbles into an opening in the crowd. The floor beneath him is a round metal plate. There's a huge chain attached to it that leads all the way up, where there's a massive silver outcropping with a hole in the bottom. Ted stares at it, his mind trying to relate something. It's about that structure, this pit, something so familiar...

   Suddenly something falls from it. He watches it sparkle and fall all the way down straight at him, and he throws himself aside only at the last moment. The object explodes into the metal plate drenches him in water. Suddenly he gets it, he knows where he is. He's in a bathtub. It's a giant faucet far above him, and he was standing on the drain-plug. "What the fuck..." he whispers. He looks up, and it's snowing purple. The valet has finished lighting candles and was now scattering flower petals into the bath. He watches dumbfounded as they fall like giant leaves, as if in slow motion. The smell of lilac floods the pit.

   The valet stands, scans her work quickly, and then walks away. He hears her say at the door, "Your bath is ready, Miss."

   Ted waits, holding his breath as he listens to someone enter the bathroom. Another giantess appears above the wall. It's a girl, naked. She towers over the sunken bath tub and looks down without expression. Then finally she says, "Thank you. You may go."

   Something in Ted's mind was yelling get out, get out, but he's frozen. He can't think, can't do anything. He just stares at the girl as she paces around the tub. Eventually she bends and undoes her sandals, placing them on the edge of the bath (was that blood on them?) and sits, holding her bare feet above the crowd, her arms wrapped under her thighs. She smiles. Soon all of the strange men gather around her feet. Do they have no sense of caution? Doesn't any of this feel wrong to them? The girl giggles as they reach up to stroke her soles. She wiggles her toes as they tickle her.
    Eventually she yawns. She shakes the hair from her face and says, "You're all here because I'm bored. So I'm going to squish you. For fun." Then she puts her feet down on them and stands up. Crunches and wet splats echoes off the walls as tens of people crush into goo. Ted's blood runs cold his mind blanks. The girl sighs and grins, stretching her thin, towering body and wiggling her gory toes as half crushed people scream beneath them. "Fun," she says. She lifts one foot lazily, and hundreds of faces gaze up at her sole as chunks of pink flesh dribble off it. She holds it there for a long time, and then steps forward again.


***

    Autumn feels them crunch beneath her heel. The masses under her pads resist for a moment, then they break and splatter too. Their insides are warm, and the feeling is tingly in contrast with the cool marble. This is too good. She loves feeling so many of them pop beneath her foot. She loves how there's nowhere for them to go. They're hers, and they will all die for her tonight because its funner than not killing them.
    As she takes her next step, she senses the immediate change in the crowd. They're over the initial shock and are starting to panic. Her foot comes down amongst them and she feels so many of them break and die. She continues to walk casually across the bath. When she gets to the other end, she turns around and sees the writhing mass below her, punctuated by her sticky red footprints. This time she lifts her foot high and, after a slight pause, stomps it down flat into a thick patch of them and feels the firm crunch of their bodies. Blood sprays up the walls and little chunks of people stick to them. She stomps her way back across the tub, enjoying seeing the ebb and flow of the people reacting to her steps, their screams rising and falling, all of them running for their lives with nowhere to go.
     She watches them all heading back toward the opposite end of the tub again. Stragglers are getting left behind, trampled down by the others or already wounded from her. She raises her her big toe over the nearest one. He frantically tries to stand, but she presses down on his back and feels him snap. She crunches his head, sees his brains squirt out. Then she swings her foot down on another straggler, smushing him under her pad and twisting him into paste. She does this for several more of them, popping them under her heels or toes. One little half-squashed man drags himself away with only his arms. She can tell how far he's crawled from the length of intestines leading from one of her footprints. She puts her toe on his entrails and drags him back, but his guts snap before he slides too far, so she presses her pinky toe into his head and crunches him, giggling.
   
***

    Ted grips himself tightly and rocks back and forth in the crowd. Everything is fucked, everything is fucked. Somewhere in his mind he knows it's completely hopeless, there's no possible way out, no hope in hell. The step for women to enter the bath is miles too high for any of them to reach. Some of them are trying to pull out the drain plug, but he doesn't know if that would be any better a death, and besides, they're not going to get it out. He's going to die. Under her feet.
    Thirty five years ago he had a house, a family. He could still remember the faces of his wife and daughter, remember the fake flowers on top of the old piano. It call came rushing back to him now. Before he had shrank and been left alone. He hadn't seen them since then, but suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be with them one last time, at any size.
    The shouting rises again, and the crowd pushes. He's swept away, barely keeping his feet. Screams get cut off by crunches and gurgles behind him. She's stepping into the crowd again, but slowly this time. Like she's feeling them out before she kills them, oh God, slow and pendulous, the godly sole presses its gore-slicked surface into the faces of men and turns them into mush. Everything smells of insides, vomit, piss and lilac. Fear and death, and bath fragrance. He has to get away, but the crowd surges around mindlessly as the giant feet slowly pulverize it to bits, and he can only be swept along with it. He can't even see where they're going. Suddenly he"s drenched in a shower of blood, and as he wipes his eyes he feels floppy chunks of meat slide off his shoulders. She must have stomped down close to him and he didn't even see it. He has to get out. He needs some kind of control, he can't just keep running with the sheep.
     "You're getting boring," the girl says. "You don't want to bore me."
     As the crowd thins from the massive casualties, Ted sees that they're headed blindly for a corner. Fuck that! Fuck! He finally finds purchase, grabbing someone next to him by the shirt, and pulls him to the ground, using him as leverage to push his way out. He shoves through the masses. Soon he'll be able to run, free from the herd.
    The girl's foot lands in front of him and he bounces off it. He hears clearly the bodies bursting beneath it, sees the blood pour from beneath her sole. He touched her. He touched her, oh God, he can see bloody hand prints on her skin. There are dozens of them.
     Then the foot moves toward him, sliding slowly across the floor. He sees the man he pulled to the ground earlier crawling through the muck on his stomach, crying. He was one of the men from his adoption group, of course, that's why he had a shirt on. Her foot moves over his lower body, and he screams as he gets slid along the floor. Then his legs catch under and as the foot slides over him his body curls up and squeezes all his guts out his mouth and neck like toothpaste before his face bursts. Ted spins and tries to get back into the crowd. He panics, grabs hair, anything, but they push back, and he just can't get in, no matter how desperately he needs to.
    Then he feels it - her foot against his back. His heart jumps in his throat and chills run down his spine. He's touching death. She's pushing him into the crowd, and the pressure builds as people bunch up against him until soon he can barely breathe. He almost wretches as they press against the corner of the bath. He can't move at all. It's done, they're all going to be squished into one paste.
    But then suddenly he's rising. The girl turns her foot so that her sole presses against the people, and he's pushed up and on top of the crowd by it. In a flash he sees his one chance of escape - her toes. He can climb up and over them and away from the death trap. It's completely fight-or-flight now as he clambers his away across the tightly packed heads and shoulders. He manages to grab hold of the toes and starts pulling himself up them.
     A shadow covers him and he looks up. It's the sole of her other foot. She's sitting on the edge of the bath, and now that she has the men cornered against her sole, she's going to press down on them with her other leg. There's no way Ted will make it over the toes in time, he's so close but he has to try to press through between her big and second toe before he's pushed down into the masses. He shoves his way face-first into the flesh.

***

    Autumn's feet touch as she sits lightly on the edge of the bath. They're so warm and wet. One is trapping the little people into the corner with her sole, and the other slowly descends. She giggles. They're trying so hard to get away, clawing helplessly at the walls and at her foot. One is even climbing her toes. But they won't get away. " "Entertain me," she says, and lowers her foot so that her sole just barely touches them, just enough that it tickles her and sends them squirming helplessly, so close to imminent death. She loves the fear her feet can instill.
     Eventually though even that gets boring, so she starts the crush. She tilts her head lazily as she peers down and presses harder, biting her lip. Slowly they squish and ooze up between her toes as pink mush. She twists slowly, savoring the thick, warm goo on her soles.
     When she lifts her foot, it's caked with red and pink flaps of compacted flesh hanging from her sole, and strings of intestines stretch between it and the floor. Blood drips from the tip of her toe. In the space where her arch had been, bodies move and twitch weakly beneath a thick coating of gore. Autumn steps down on them slowly and drags her foot back, smearing them to make sure they're absolutely destroyed.
     She sighs contentedly. That was pretty fun. She feels something wiggling between the toes of her other foot. She realizes it must be that one who had been climbing her foot. He had managed to crawl between her toes and was trying to get out the other side. She lets him wriggle. It's cute, how desperate he is. But that gets boring too and she squeezes her toes together and he crunches. He squirts blood out his mouth as he dies. So much for the escape attempt. She rubs her toes together until he's a thin paste.
     Autumn looks around the bath. It's almost completely soaked in blood. Here and there tiny forms move, crawling or limping or running wildly in no particular direction. She walks on a few of them on her way out of the tub, enjoying the last little crunches. She considers taking a shower.
    Instead picks up the phone again.

The End.