The first thing Noah noticed when he came to was the stickiness.

He opened his eyes to find himself staring directly at the back of a receipt—his face mashed up against the paper. Spittle from Madeline’s gum ran down the sides of his face and burned into his eyes.

His body felt contorted in directions they never should have gone. Embedded within the gummy prison he found himself in, he felt that both his arms were jutted out just enough from the gum wad to feel the paper around him. His legs, however, felt bent behind him, scorpion-style, and he was faintly sure something felt like he was bleeding.

How could a piece of gum be so deadly?

With only one ear outside of the thick gum, Noah listened intently with the other to see what he could hear. How much time had passed? Was the store closed? Would someone be taking out the trash or was he damned to be trapped here until he starved?

As soon as he thought about food, the overwhelming dehydration of the past few hours swept across him. He had been sprinting, running, fighting for his life without a moment of rest ever since he found himself shrunken down to this size. As he felt Madeline’s spit continue to run past his face and soak the receipt below him, he grew nauseous in anticipation of what he knew he needed to do.

He waited anxiously for the pool of spit to spill his way, and slowly, it did—covering both his nose and mouth in the thick fluid.

It was either drink or drown, so he drank.

At this size, drinking Madeline’s spit pulled the water tension down and cleared his face. He drank deeply, trying not to gag at the minty taste, until his nose cleared just enough to breathe. He gasped for air, taking in as much as he could before the spit would flow back towards him, and he would need to drink again.

This fetid process repeated itself three or four times, until Noah’s stomach felt so full, it was about to burst. Mercifully, however, he had drank enough, and the gum seemed dry enough not to drown him in its fluid.

“Gross,” he heard a familiar voice say above him. Madeline!

He heard a faint thud. It sounded as is someone had stomped on the floor. In fact, he was sure of it—at this size, the sound becomes unmistakable.

“What was it?” Came another voice.

“Just a bug,” came Madeline’s response. A pause, then: “Gross, hold on, I gotta scrape this off.”

“Can you take the trash out while you’re over there? I’ve got like eight boxes of plastic to throw out.”

A wave of panic fled through Noah’s mind. The dumpster? Could I survive in there? I can’t get out of this fucking gum, I don’t think I’d last a minute in there.

But as he considered the seemingly inevitable, the plans above him changed.

“Come on, it’ll take me ten minutes to get to the dumpster,” Madeline complained.

“Then crush it down and make room,” came a flat response.

A whole new level of fear rushed through Noah, but there was no time to even contemplate it.

His trash can was suddenly jolted to one side. The receipts around him scraped against each other and he felt his gum roll—and his body with it.

He found himself suddenly facing up towards the top of the trash can. Hundreds of feet of plastic walls stopped, and in the hazy distance, he could see the ceiling of the store. The overhead lighting bore down harshly into the trash can. Noah squinted his eyes and tried to move his right hand to cover them, but it was no use. His arms could barely move. Unless it was directly to his left or right, he couldn’t grab a thing.

Then, like an eclipse, Madeline’s bright red hair soared over the lip of the trash can. Her head looked straight down into it with dispassionate normalcy.

Tears welled up in Noah’s eyes. “Madeline, please, God, help me!!” He screamed—his voice cracking.

Of course, it was no use. From her vantage point, even her white gum blended into the white receipts that surrounded it. Perhaps, if she could see that gum, she would have hesitated to do what she did next.

Noah watched as a thick, lug-soled Chelsea boot began to move in place of where Madeline’s face was. She was lifting her foot above and over the trash can.

Her co-worker had asked her to crush the trash down, and she was going to get it done.

As her boot lowered, Noah once again felt the air down in the trash rush around in all directions as it was displaced by her massive boot and leg. The roaring sound drown out all of the other sounds in the store.

As Noah watched the boot descend upon him, he could see what looked to be a common roach embedded in between two lugs of her boot sole. It’s body was smashed underneath where the ball of Madeline’s foot fell within her boot. Surrounding the body, a shiny wet spot spread out.

That’s what I’ll be, Noah thought to himself. A smear on Maddie’s shoe.

He closed his eyes as the smashed bug crashed down into him. And braced for death.

…

But death didn’t come.

Instead, Noah felt himself shoved deeper and deeper into the bug and the sole of Madeline’s boot. His body pushed through the roach’s exoskeleton and he felt himself soaked in its inside. He gagged at the feeling, but as the crushing force lowered even as he felt himself pushed deeper and deeper into the trash can, he realized that as terrible as this was, it was his absolution.

Embedded underneath her boot sole, between the gum, the roach, and in between lugs, he couldn’t be crushed. He could still, however, feel the terrible dropping feeling in his gut as Madeline ripped her boot out of the trash can. He felt himself go weightless, for just a moment, before the boot stomped down again.

As this continued over and over again, Noah couldn’t help to begin to laugh. At first chuckling, then all at once, bursting into hysteria as Madeline stomped away.

It was the world’s most fucked-up roller coaster, and the adrenaline of survival was turning this feeling into a sadistic thrill ride. As she stomped, over and over, Noah pushed against the two lugs to either side of him. He blinked bug guts out of his eyes and pulled to push himself deeper into the bug, and further from the gum which held him prisoner. He tried to maximize Madeline’s stomping by only pulling when her foot as lowering. The effort was just enough, and he pulled nearly all of himself out of the gum. Only his ankle remained.

He only needed one more good stomp, and he would be free. But instead of stomping, Madeline lifted her shoe, and everything stopped.

“Fuck,” he heard her say. Her voice reverberated down her body and into her shoe—vibrating the lugs which held him prisoner. It was as if she was speaking all around him. “I stepped on my own gum.”

His world tipped as he felt himself turned sideways.

***

Far above him, Madeline had taken one look at her boot sole before shaking her head in disgust. She ripped the boot off and held it out in her right hand like it was going to bite her.

It had already been a pretty shitty day for her. First, she had to open and work a double because Gale had called out sick last-minute. On top of that, they had been slammed, and she didn’t even get a chance to take her lunch break. Now, her favorite shoes had bug guts and gum splattered all over them.

“Look, Bridget” she said to her supervisor—which was already an embarrassment, as she was five years younger than her. “I’m going to scrape this off in the back and I’m going on break.”

Bridget looked around the store and let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine, it’s like three anyways, the rush won’t start up again until five.”

Satisfied, Madeline marched to the back of office half-barefoot. She plopped down on the seat of the break table bench and set her boot down next to her purse. She fiddled around with its contents before pulling out the pocket knife her Dad lent her for safety.

“Thanks, pops” she muttered to herself as she flicked the knife open and dug it deep into the gum.

***

Back underneath the boot, Noah felt himself suddenly face-to-face with a massive silver blade. However, Madeline had taken just long enough to get into the back office for Noah to wiggle himself free of the gum. He quickly moved to the side and let the blade raise—taking the gum along with it.

With the boot now on its side, Noah stood on the boot’s sole and looked down.

It was thankfully only a ten-foot drop, and at this point, he was willing to risk it.

Before the blade returned to scrape off what remained of the roach, he jumped.

It felt like minutes of freefall before he slammed onto the hard particle wood of the work bench. His right ankle twisted terribly under him and he collapsed onto the table. Survival still at the top of his mind, he spin around and looked to Madeline.

Above him, she seemed more interested in her shoe than anything crawling on the table. Her massive gray purse was placed only a few hundred relative feet away from him, and so he ran.

“Fuck, fuck, damn it!” He screamed every profane word he knew as he put his twisted ankle to work and broke into a full-on sprint. He was able to just cross the gap before he heard Madeline lower her boot back to the floor. He would only have seconds to climb inside.

The overturned purse had been left unzipped, and without stopping, he lept forward—diving in between the teeth of the zipper.

It wasn’t a moment too soon, as himself and the purse’s contents bounced around as Madeline lifted the purse and placed it on her shoulder.

At his size, Noah tumbled down, down into the depth of the purse. He landed with a heap on top of a wrapped tampon and a massive credit card.

Above him, he could see through the open zipper as the artificial lighting gave way to blue skies. She had stepped outside and was heading to lunch.

For the first time so far this day, the nightmare seemed far less terrible. At least Madeline knew him. Perhaps, he could find a way to get in touch with her. Maybe write messages or leave notes in the purse.

He couldn’t give up hope. Not now. He wasn’t dead.

Not yet.