I hear the sound of a pen fall down from behind me and rattle onto the floor in front of me. I was in advanced biology in the lecture hall. I glance behind me to see a gorgeous girl tapping on my shoulder.  

“excuse me.” She whispered. “Can you grab my pen for me?”  

She was absolutely stunning. Blonde hair, full figure, with tan and smooth skin. I try to stop thinking about her and more importantly stop staring at her and grab the pen.  

I grab it and hand it back to her. As she grabs it, her finger brushes against me and I feel butterflies in my stomach. I hate it. I hate that one pretty girl barely acknowledges my existence and all of the sudden, my monkey brain falls in love.  

The lectures went on and on. Every week. Always boring, and always unable to pay attention with the girl sitting behind me. I thought it would be easy to forget about that one time incident, but it turned out to not be a one time incident. I don’t know if it’s true about the dumb clumsy blonde, but she kept dropping her pen throughout the semester. No matter where it landed, she would tell me to grab it. If it would land in someone’s bag, or by someone’s feet, she would tell me to grab it and it was always awkward. Why didn’t she tell them to grab it for her?  

Whatever her reason, my money brain couldn’t help but enjoy even the little bit of interaction I had with her.  

“Now for the biggest part of your grade. A group project.” Most of the auditorium erupts is sighs. “everyone find your groups of two or three.” 

Fuck. I hate group projects and I don’t know anyone in this class. This is always so awkward. Maybe I can just do it by myself. Maybe I’ll just say my partner dropped the class and that’s why I’m working by myself.  

Suddenly a pen falls down and rattle on the ground in front of me. I instinctively grab it and turn around.  

The gorgeous girl smiles, “thanks!” 

I start to turn back around, but then I hear her again.  

“Hey, umm…” the girl says. “John, right?”  

My heart accelerates and I nervously turn back towards her. How does she know my name? 

“y-yes?” I say.  

“Oh, sorry. I saw your name on your notebook. Sorry if that’s creepy.” The girl says.  

“Oh no, it’s okay.” I reply.  

“Would you like to be my partner?” She asks sweetly. There is a pause as your brain can’t comprehend such a beautiful girl talking to you. “I’m Juliet by the way.” 

I stuttered and tried to find my words. "Uh... Uh... yeah! Yes, I'd love to be your partner… Group project partner, that is…" 

She smiles and exchanges contact information with me.  

Once her and I started working together, things were great, and we worked really well together. I didn’t really understand what we were doing most of the time. I was smart, but all of the calculations and analysis she was doing was way out of my league. She was leading the way, and I was following her lead. Or… sometimes it was almost felt like she was leading the way, and I was following her orders.   

I’ve always been a bit of a pushover and I sure as hell couldn’t help myself with Juliet. She was gorgeous and way out of my league and I knew I didn’t have a chance with her in a million years, but my stupid monkey brain would jump on the opportunity to do whatever she says.  

It was odd when one day she asked me to grab something for her, and I sprang up to grab it and hand it to her, only for her to say, "Good boy" casually. It felt weird, but I tried to think it was nothing more than a strange choice of words, until she did it again. And another time after that. 

We would always work in her apartment. She had a roommate but I haven’t seen her yet. It’s just been me and her. Alone. Which always had my heart racing. 

We would sit on opposite ends of the couch with plenty of room for Jesus between us.  

Juliet turned towards me and put her feet up on the couch, in the space between us.   

“Can you fetch me some water” Juliet asks while looking down at her phone.  

“Sure!” I say with some enthusiasm.  

I return with the water and place it on the coffee table in front of her. She is still on her phone and doesn’t acknowledge my good deed. I go to sit back on my end of the couch, but she has slightly extended her legs, not giving me much room to sit. Regardless, I squeeze to the end of the couch and avoid touching her feet, which are now nearly pressed up against me.  

Juliet glances up from her phone to see you pushed all the way to the other side, “Aww sorry to steal your spot.” She then instead puts her feet onto my lap. “There we go. Now we can share your spot.” She says with a smile.  

Her feet looked perfectly pedicured with vibrant blue nail polish. Her soft feet rested on my lap and I was frozen, unaware what to do. I wasn’t into feet, but I could easily say that they were gorgeous, just like the rest of her. She wiggled her toes and just kept looking at her phone. 

“Oh, you got my water for me!” She exclaimed. “Good boy.” She said while petting my arm with her foot.  

Confused and concerned I stand up and stuttered out, "Um... I'm not... like a dog, you know. You don't have to call me 'good boy' or anything like that." 

She laughed. "Oh, silly. Of course, you're not a dog," she said while using her hand to mess up my hair and then patting me on the head. "I'm just showing my appreciation." 

"A thanks is fine," I stammered out. 

"Aww, I'm sorry. Did I make you uncomfortable?" She asked kindly yet somewhat condescendingly. 

"Uh, no, it's fine. I shouldn't have said anything," I said back. 

Then she dropped her pen, and it landed by her bare feet. I instinctively went down and grabbed it between her feet. 

"Wow, I don't even have to tell you what to do anymore," she said quietly. 

Confused, I asked what she was talking about. 

She smiled and replied, "Oh, it's just that you’re starting to do things without me even asking now. I wonder what extent you'll go to if I do ask." She raised her bare foot and hovered her toes in front of my mouth. "Kiss," she demanded. 

I jolted backward into the armrest of the couch. "What? No." 

"Do it," she said softly. 

"No," I said as I stood up and backed away. 

"Jeez, I was just messing around. You don't have to get so serious about it," she said. "But I kinda thought you would do it. I just got a pedicure, and they are looking hot. My toes, that is. Do you not like my feet?" she asked. 

"I don't like feet. I don't know if I seem like that kind of guy, or what you think I'm here for. I'm here for the class project, and I'm not sure if you only picked me as your partner so you can mess with me and make fun of me and show me off as some sort of freak to your friends, but I am not having it." 

"Aww, John... I'm so sorry. I'm not here for anything like that. I'm not trying to mess with you," she reassured me. "It was a dumb joke. I'm sorry. Come here, sit." 

I hesitantly sit back down on the couch next to her.  

She says, “I’m here to get an A+ on this project and I sit behind you in class and always see you taking good notes, and I thought we would make a good team. You haven't even gotten to see what all of this work we’ve been doing is going to turn out to be. Do you want to see?”  

I shake off the bad feeling and come back to reality. She’s not out to get me. She is just trying to complete a group project. Nothing more.  

“Sure.” I say. “Let me see it.”  

“Okay, this is going to BLOW your MIND.” She says excitedly. “Here. Slide that chair over here.” 

 I slide the chair over next to her and sit down in it.  

“... I just need the chair.” She laughs.  

“Oh...” I bounce out of the chair and back onto the couch. “Of course, sorry.”  

“It’s okay sweetie, now watch this.” She says.  

I stumble on her calling me sweetie, but before I can even think about it, I watch the chair disappear before my eyes.  

“Holy shit.” I say under my breath. “You just... incinerated that chair. With the app we’ve been making on your phone?”  

Juliet laughs, “No, I did not ‘incinerate’ the chair.” She bends down and picks up a tiny object off the ground from between her pedicured feet and holds up a tiny chair.  

I am speechless.  

“Eh?? Pretty neat, huh?” She says casually, like she didn’t just invent life changing technology.  

“We are... totally getting an A...” I say softly.  

“Currently, yeah.” She says. “But I want an A+. And I know exactly what we can do.”  

“Oh yeah?” I say curiously.  

“Yeah! We need to use it on a human subject!” She exclaims with a big smile, a smile which I don’t share.  

“Where are we gonna find a human sub...” I start saying as I’m interrupted by her putting her hands on my lap and giving me the ‘puppy dog eyes’.  

“No. No, no, no, no and no.” I say.  

“Oh, come on. You don’t have to be such a party pooper. I want a good grade on this, and I know you do too...” she starts to say.  

I interrupt her this time, “We don’t need to shrink me to do that!”  

“This is bigger than just a grade. I came up with this, and if you want to continue being my copartner for this project, you’re going to need to do your part.”  

“I can do other parts!” I exclaim.  

“You can be the Neil Armstrong of shrinking. Think about it.” she tells me. “Kids will learn about you in their textbook as the first person to shrink. One tiny step for man… one giant leap for mankind…” 

I stop for a second and think.  

“Please...” She asks softly. “I’ve actually been working on this for a really long time. Way before this project, and I know for a fact it's safe. Here, try to break this tiny chair.” She hands it to me, and I hold it in my hand.  

Even using both hands, I can't feel the chair budge at all. “Damn. It is strong.”  

“See?” she smiles, “Now let's try it on you!”  

“Right now?!” I say nervously. “Come on. It’ll be fun. Here, let me just set up this camera so we can record it.” She pops up and grabs a camera and a tripod. 

I hesitated. "Wait, I'm really not ready," 

"Oh, come on. Don't be such a baby about it. You trust me, right?" She said sweetly. 

In my head, I wanted to say no, but I didn't have the heart to tell her that I didn't trust her. So I told her that I trusted her, but not to that extent. She took both of my hands softly and looked into my eyes. 

"Please, John? Do it for me?" She pleaded. 

"Um... Okay. Fine," I said, with a sour feeling in my stomach. 

"You'll do it?" she asked. 

"I'll do it," I sighed. 

Juliette looked into the camera, "And that's verbal consent. John has agreed to shrinking and will continue having full control of his decisions. All actions and choices are his own." She held up her phone and pressed the button in her app to shrink me. 

I tried to think about what she meant by what she was saying before she hit the button, but my mind and my world went completely blank. 

Suddenly, I was huddled up into a ball, standing between two perfectly pedicured feet. My eyes were still glued shut, but my body felt completely normal again, except for a feeling in my gut telling me that I had made a horrible mistake. 

I opened my eyes and my vision was filled with a whole new world. A new world that didn't make any sense. A world that no human had ever experienced. I saw this vast landscape with towering landmarks scattered throughout. I looked at what seemed like a redwood tree that had exploded past its already ridiculous size into a ginormous new beast of a tree. In the back of my head, I knew it was just the leg of a table, but my mind refused to grasp that as reality. 

As I turned my head, I saw a fleshy wall that sprouted from the ground and into the stratosphere. I jolted back and turned around just to see another one behind me. I slowly accepted the fact that those two mountains were just Juliet's bare feet. I cranked my neck higher and looked up her long, smooth legs, up to her short shorts, up to her belly button showing beneath her shirt, and continued looking up as my neck started to hurt. I looked past the form of her breasts through her light t-shirt and up to her smiling down at me.  

Without a word, I saw her body shift. She leaned her weight to one side and slowly raised one of her legs. I glanced to the left to see her right foot slowly taking off from the ground, like a giant spacecraft being propelled into the air against all logic and gravity. An object that large shouldn't be able to fly, yet it did. It lifted off the ground and into the air. It seemed like it should be a million pounds, but it looked weightless as it ascended. I saw the bare sole of the gorgeous girl as she raised her foot above me. It looked like a gigantic building dangling above. I felt this sense of dread that whatever was holding this enormous building above me wasn't strong enough and that it might just snap and collapse . As I thought that, I saw the foot start descending towards me. Through this whole process, I was frozen in place. I couldn't speak, I couldn't run. The fear had taken over. 

The foot rushed down towards me and I flinched into a ball, expecting to get crushed into nothingness. Instead, nothing happened. I looked up and saw the foot slowly descending like an angel coming down from heaven. Something about it’s size moving so effortlessly seems angelic and soothing. The toes of the massive foot point towards me as it approaches. Everything but the big toe leaves my field of view as the single toe consumes my entire vision. It pauses an arm's reach away. From the sky, the world rumbles. 

“Kiss.” 

I lean forward and pucker my lips.