During the walk to Holly's house, Therese firmly clung to her daughter's foot as April followed her friend inside her bedroom, where the brunette reached into a drawer and took out a box full of various types of makeup.

"Where do we begin?" asked an impatient April, admiring the shiny array of beauty items her friend was carrying.

"I know! We should do each other's toes," proposed Holly. "My white doesn't go with the clothes I'll be wearing tonight."

April nodded. "That sounds fun! Let me check your nail polish," she said as she lifted the tiny bottles one by one, eyeing the different dyes and trying to decide which one she felt like using that day.

Holly, having already pictured which one she wanted to use, grabbed a fiery red bottle for herself.

"Can I use the same one?" April asked, intrigued by her friend's choice.

"Of course!" said Holly. "Then we'll have matching toes!"

The girls moved to the bathroom where Holly started filling a bowl with hot water.

"I'm going to soak my feet for a while," the girl announced as she kicked off her shoes. "How about you? Are you ready to begin?"

April nodded, bending down to dislodge her sandals. Once she put the shoes out of the way to avoid getting them dirty, she sat on the stool and twirled her toes, offering her foot to her friend.

Holly grabbed the brush and bent down, ready to work on her friend's toenails.

As she saw the gigantic teenager getting close, Therese began to feel hopeful; she started flailing with her arms and legs, wanting to get noticed by her daughter's friend so she could finally be rescued.

Indeed, the girl's brown eyes were looking in her direction, but the woman's insignificance made her difficult to notice. Instead, the teen began painting her friend's toes, starting with the smallest one and gradually moving up.

Once she got to the big toe, the one Therese was glued to, she finally noticed the woman, or at least she noticed something that clung to the girl's foot.

"You have something stuck to your foot. Ew, it's a bug," she said, momentarily interrupting her work so that April could take care of the nuisance.

"Huh?" the girl said, raising up her foot so that she could take a look at it. "Mom?" she gasped, an alarmed look on her face.

"You called the bug 'Mom'?" asked a weirded out Holly.

April shook her head. "It's an inside joke. You wouldn't understand."

"Right," Holly said, taking a second look at April's foot, this time while paying increased attention.

Hearing April calling the bug Mom put the craziest idea into her mind and glancing again at the strange bug seemed to confirm her intuition. Holly loudly gasped. "No way!" she said. "No fucking way!"

With a swift motion, the brunette scraped the speck off from her friend's toe, catching Therese under a fingernail. She gazed at the speck now caught in the vast underside of her long nail, recognizing her minuscule but unmistakably human form.

"So it was true!" Holly said in a loud, dramatic tone that deafened Therese. "It was your mom, and she's tiny!"

"Um... Yeah," admitted April, caught in a mix of emotions. She was at the same time feeling sorry for having forgotten her mother on her foot all day, embarrassed that her secret had been found out, and relieved that she didn't need to hide it anymore.

"So she caught the shrinking food disease!" said the brunette, a big grin on her face. "I always wanted to see one of them up close," she said as she studied the minuscule woman with her brown eyes. "She's soooo small! I can't believe it is an actual person. I always thought that it was strange how your parents suddenly moved out of the country. Wait, that means your dad..."

"Yup," April confirmed. "Him too..."

"Is he with you as well?"

April brought a finger under her chin. "I don't think so, he should be at home right now."

"And what was your mom doing on your foot?" Holly asked, smirking. "Did you step on her by accident? She seems fine though..."

"No, it's just," April said, feeling kind of embarrassed. "I didn't know where else to place her."

Holly scoffed and shook her head. "And so you put her on your foot? That's kind of disgusting!"

"But!" April said, struggling to explain her reasoning. "She just sticks so nicely to it, and her jar was broken!"

"She must be so dirty and gross right now," Holly said, looking back at the speck caught under her fingernail like a piece of dirt. "I know! Let's give her a bath!"

The brunette lowered her finger above the bowl where she was soaking her feet, tossing the woman in the middle of the water with a flick of her index.

"She's so light she doesn't even sink!" she giggled, watching Therese floating on the surface of the water, among clumps of dead foot skin bigger than her entire body.

"Ooh, neat!" April said, entertained by the sight. "Enjoying the bath, Mom?"

"It looks like she's bored! Let's make it more fun for her!" Holly said as she shook her feet underwater, creating a series of waves in the formerly still water.

"Be careful!" April said despite a certain amusement, losing sight of her mother as the bowl's water rippled around the woman. "She's so small, that may be too much for her!"

"No prob," said Holly. "I'm going to catch her!" The girl lifted up her foot, fishing the minuscule woman and dragging her out of the water, leaving her to dry up in the space in front of her toes as the girl rested her foot on the lid of the bowl. "From one foot to another!"

April giggled, happy and relieved that she was getting to share the burden of her tiny parents with someone else.

Holly turned to her friend, seemingly deep in thought. "So it makes sense now that you moved in with your aunt. You should've told me by the way! We're friends!"

"Well..." April said. "I didn't mind you knowing, I just didn't want the news to spread! You're not telling anyone else, right? It would suck if the whole school knew..."

"No, of course..." Holly said. "I won't be telling anyone!" The brunette shifted her gaze to the speck-sized woman shored up on her foot, appearing insignificant and lost in comparison with the girl's toes.

"So," she asked as she turned to her friend. "What do you make them do now that they're small? If I had tiny people of my own, I would make them do stuff for me all day!"

"Like what?" asked an intrigued April.

"I don't know, like cleaning my feet!" Holly said.

"But she's so small!" said April. "It would take days for her to clean them."

"It's not like she has anything else to do," grinned Holly. "Look at her," she pointed. "She's just chilling on my foot, slacking off. I bet that's what she does all day. She actually needs some work to keep busy and not waste her life doing nothing!"

April nodded, convinced by her friend's reasoning. "Yeah, that might be true. She used to have a steady job before shrinking, after all!"

"See?" Holly said. "Why don't we start her off right now?"

"But your feet are already clean..."

"Right. So she can do yours," Holly said as she swung her foot over April's, letting the tiny woman fall right into a particularly grimy spot between two of her daughter's toes.

"Ew!" April said as she watched the tiny woman roll through the crevice, right under the sandal strap where the sweat and the shoe materials had formed a blackish gunk that stained the girl's foot.

Therese, having gone back to where she started, looked up to see her mountainous daughter beaming at her. "Are you ready, mom?"

The woman, feeling humiliated by the careless way the girls had been treating her, staunchly refused to clean the disgusting mess.

What Holly had said was in part true, after all. But she used to be an engineer before shrinking. There was no way she would accept to stoop as low as to become a cleaner for her daughter's toes, especially when the job involved no pay.

"Is she doing it or not?" asked Holly, having bent down in front of April's foot to watch Therese closely.

"She looks like she's slacking off!" April said. "Maybe you were right. All this doing nothing has made her lazy!"

As Holly started poking the poor woman with her fingernail, trying to motivate her to get to work, April heard her phone ringing. "Auntie?" she chirped. "Yeah, Mom is still with me! I forgot to tell you. What? Dad? No, I don't know where he is. You can't find him? Have you looked for him? Do you have to go out? Well, don't worry too much. He'll come up eventually. We always find them in the end!"

As Therese kept running around her daughter's foot, doing her best to avoid Holly's fingernail, her husband found himself still stuck to the tissue Maria had used to wipe herself after her fun time. Entangled in the pussy juice and having been tossed inside the bin, Bill was trapped and unable to move, stranded right in the middle of the disgusting location. As Maria was getting ready to go out with her Tinder date, Bill saw the woman lift the lid of the trashcan and for a second hoped that she was going to rescue him, only to see her throw a bunch of cherry pits over him.

Terrified by the avalanche of building-sized boulders, the man thanked his lucky stars for surviving, only to see her drop more trash on top of him, from used Qtips to makeup removal pads.

Once he finally managed to regain his ability to move, he started wading through the pussy juice to reach the top of the trash pile.

There, he waited for Maria to come back again, and once she finally did, he looked up in awe at the beauteous woman, who had just finished doing her makeup and was wearing only a push-up bra that made her already huge breasts look like ripe cantaloupes.

"Maria!" he waved and shouted as the woman seemed to look straight in his direction, granting Bill the delusion that she had noticed him. Instead, she parted her lips, her mouth opening and letting a putrid deluge fall all over him.

Once Bill found himself covered by half bitten pieces of rotten apple, and Maria had spat the last of the foul-tasting fruit from her mouth, the woman threw the rest of the spoiled apple into the bin and walked away with a disgusted face. "This is the last time I eat fruit without peeling it first," she told herself.

*

"She doesn't seem to want to do it!" Holly said, having chased Therese through most of the surface of April's foot.

"Maybe it's because you keep tormenting her with your finger," the girl giggled.

"Whatever," the girl said. "It's so fun watching her run away, trying not to get squished."

"Well, you should stop," April said. "Besides, I should be bringing her back home."

"What do you mean? We'll be late for the concert if we go to your house."

"Then what do I do? I told my aunt I would take her back home."

"Can't she come with you? You said you usually carry her on your feet."

"Yeah, but," April said. "I have open shoes, and I'm scared I could lose her."

"That's no problem," Holly beamed as she went to her closet, returning with a pair of black ankle boots. "She can come with me."

April's face shined. "You would really do this for us?"

"For my best friend and her mom?" Holly said as she picked up Therese and shoved her in the space between her toes. "Of course I would!"

"Wow, thanks!" April said as she watched Holly lower her foot inside the ankle boots.

Therese saw Holly shoot her one last smug glance as she trapped her inside her shoe. The teen was reminiscing of how the woman once scolded her for putting her feet on the kitchen table while at April's house, and now her sweet revenge had arrived in a most ironic form: with the woman glued to those very feet, and ready to spend the night plastered to them like a useless piece of lint.

"Shouldn't we give her something to eat?" April asked as she watched her mother disappear inside Holly's shoe.

The brunette shrugged. "She'll eat with us once we're at the venue."

"Okay, then," April said. "Let's go get ready for tonight!"

*

If the morning ride inside April's shoe had been uncomfortable and disgusting, being stuck inside Holly's ankle boots was on a whole another level. The girl wasn't wearing socks, and the stench inside was hellish. Therese was lying in a puddle of foot sweat, and with each step the toes slammed on that puddle, throwing the sweat all over the woman's face and body, while new batches of liquid poured out of the teen's toes at every second.

Up above, the girls were waiting in line for the concert, excited at the thought of entering the venue. They showed the tickets to the staff and rushed inside, lining up for the food kiosk as they still had plenty of time before the show started.

Therese had been thrown around the toe section of Holly's shoe for quite some time, so she welcomed the pause that came once the girl stopped to order her food. But as a song the girls loved came up in the background, Holly began to sing out loud while rhythmically tapping her foot, sending Therese all over her foot and shoe once again.

"Thanks!" Holly said as she grabbed her sandwich, handing the server a bill. Once the girls had both received their food, they searched for a spot to sit down and dived into it.

"Shouldn't we give my mom some?" April asked as she chewed her sandwich. "She hasn't eaten anything since this morning, she must be starving by now!"

"Yeah but how do we get her out?" Holly asked. "I can't remove my shoe here in front of everyone."

"Well if you can't take her out of the shoe, we'll just get the food to her!" April said as she tossed some crumbs inside the opening of her friend's boots."

"Gross!" Holly said as she felt the crumbs tickling her skin until they landed near the bottom of the shoe. The teen then raised and tilted her foot so that the tiny pieces of bread and filling would slide down near the toe section where Therese was sitting. She giggled as she felt the minuscule pieces of food against her toes. "Enjoy your meal!"

The breadcrumbs had been mushed under Holly's toes and were ripe with her foot sweat, but Therese was so hungry that she grabbed one as soon as she could and bit on it.

While Therese savored the sweat-soaked bread, Bill was in a similar position, nibbling at the cherry pits Maria had been chewing on. Unlike Therese, though, Bill could find something to enjoy in his situation. The idea that those cherries had been inside that divine woman's mouth turned him on, and as he bit into the fruit remains that tasted like her mouth, he almost felt as if he was making out with her.

Desperately excited, once he was done eating, he dived into the dirty tissues again, rolling in her pussy juice while jerking off.

*

"Do you think you should have your mom drink some?" Holly said as she lifted her beer.

"Hahaha, no way! She would get mad if she saw me drinking!" April said.

"Well, what is she going to do?" Holly asked.

"At her size, nothing," April giggled.

"Exactly," Holly nodded.

"Wait, that's her!" April excitedly squealed as she pointed at the stage. "She's about to start the show!"

"Woo!" said Holly as she got up and started rushing to the crowd. The first notes of a song began to play, and the girls started dancing, glad to be able to hear their favorite tunes being performed live.

"This is awesome!" April beamed as she looked at Holly.

"Yeah!" said the teen as she sipped more beer. "Wooo!"

As the girls started dancing, a two-hour nauseating rollercoaster ride began for Therese, only the rollercoaster was replaced by sweaty toes and the ride was actually a trip to every angle of the town-sized shoe.

Bill was comparatively luckier, ending up slacking off in the middle of the soft tissue, king of a pile of oversized trash, though the fear of giant bugs as well as the terrifying prospect of being tossed in some trash compactor kept him up at night.

Once Maria came back in the middle of the night, she walked a straight path to her bed, ignoring his fate and condemning him to spend yet more hours inside the bin, while at the concert venue, the girls sang their hearts out and danced to the rhythm of their favorite songs.

"This was amazing!" beamed April as the encore finished and the stage lights turned off.

"Yeah," said Holly, a grin on her face as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. "We really danced our asses off."

"God I hope she comes back to our city! I would see her again tomorrow if I could!" April raved as she and Holly lined up for the exits.

"Yeah, me too," Holly said. "Hey! I should give your mom back before we go."

"Yeah, right!" April said. "I totally forgot! But how are we going to do this? I don't have anywhere to place her!"

"Hmm, that's going to be a problem," Holly said. "Hey, how about you both sleep at my place? Tomorrow morning we'll look for something to put her in and you can both go back to your place."

April nodded. "Great idea! Then we can have a sleepover!"

"That's settled then!" Holly said as they stepped out of the venue, the fresh air of the summer night welcoming them after the hot, packed concert.

Once they got to Holly's house, the girl removed her shoes and started looking for Therese.

"Ew," April said as a whiff of the odor emanating from Holly's feet reached her nostrils.

Holly giggled. "Gotta clean these shoes when I have time." The girl inspected her foot until she saw a familiar-looking speck on her skin. "There she is!" she told April as she pointed at her big toe. "Sticking to my toes like a good girl!"

April seemed weirded out. "Why are you talking to her like she is a pet?"

"I can't help it," said Holly. "Besides talking to her as if she was a regular person would feel strange."

April yawned as she stretched her arms. "Whatever, I just wanna sleep," she said. "Can I borrow some clothes?"

"Sure," Holly said. "Take anything you like."

"Where is she going to sleep, though?" April asked as she pointed at Holly's toes. "We need to put her somewhere where bugs can't get to her."

"How about we put her back in my shoe?" Holly proposed. "Then we put the shoe inside the closet and she'll be safe."

"Fine," April said, too tired to think of a better solution.

As she got changed, Holly scraped Therese off her foot and tossed her in the middle of her ankle boots, then sealed her inside her shoe closet. "Good night, Mrs. Therese," she said as she waved toward the bottom of the shoe.

"Good night, Mom," echoed a yawny April from the bed.

And so the night fell over the city, ending another day that had been fun and satisfying for some, disgusting and terrifying for others, and rather uneventful for the vast majority of its inhabitants.

Not Therese, who was sleeping on the sweat-stained insole of the shoe of her daughter's friend, and not Bill, who laid in the company of his sister-in-law's used tissues.

*

"So, how did the concert go?" Maria asked as April jumped inside her car.

"It was great!" April beamed, still excited at the thought of the previous night. "You should have come, Auntie! It was so much fun."

"Not my style of music, I'm afraid," Maria giggled as she picked up a tiny jar between her fingers. "Here, I got this for your mom. Try not to break this one too."

"I'll pay more attention, I promise," April said as she received the jar from her aunt. As Maria rushedly started the car, though, the jar fell out of the girl's hands again, breaking into pieces on the car's floor.

April looked at the scene in horror. "Fuck!" she said as Maria stopped the car.

"Again?" said the disbelieving woman. "I just said not to break it!"

"I'm sorry, okay?" April cried. "Where are we going to put Mom now?"

"Just let her stay in your hand," said Maria. "We'll be home soon."

"But what if I lose her?" April asked. “We would never find her in the car!” Her gaze turned to her aunt's feet, noticing she was wearing her running shoes. "Hey, Auntie, are you wearing socks?"

"Fine," Maria said as she untied her shoe. "Hey, what about your dad? We need to look for him once we get back home."

"Hmm," April said, lost in thought. "I think I left him on the sofa yesterday, before we left for the shopping mall."

"The sofa, huh?" Maria said as April tossed Therese at the bottom of the sock. "Could it be that..."

She tied her shoe and raced the car, eager to check if her discarded tissues from the previous day maybe held a speck-sized man.

*

Bill and Therese had just been placed into a new plastic jar.

"This one shouldn't break as easily," sighed Maria, exhausted from the day's events.

"Right," April giggled, glancing at her parents for one last time before firing up her gaming console. "Time to check out my village!"

Therese looked at Bill with a deadpan stare. "You smell like a woman's pussy," she said.

"And you smell like feet," her husband replied. "Really stinky feet."

Therese sighed. They would have a lot of time to catch up with each other. All the time in the world. "Hopefully," she told her husband with a resigned tone, "they will remember to give us a bath..."

End of the chapter