The men and women remain seated sullenly at the picnic table where they continue to process the words Claire had left with them before exiting the attic. “I really, really hate to say this...” begins Keith. “But everything that bitch just said is true. We don't have any hope of getting out of this mess.”
“What do you mean?” Asks Isaac. We can't let ourselves think like this. We can't just give up. It will take time, but we need to stay positive if we're going to come up with a way out of here.”
“A way out? Did you not hear anything the giant bitch just told us?! How can you still have coming up with an escape plan on your mind? As much as I hate what she said, she's right. Even if we could get out of this attic and back outside, we wouldn't stand a chance against even the smallest threats nature could throw at us. It's hopeless.”
“It is not. Only after we choose to abandon it, will there be no hope left for us.”
“What if she's right, not just about the dangers outside, but about taking care of us?” asks Cynthia.
“What?” replies Isaac.
“Think about it. She hasn't hurt us. She's feeding us and she gave us a comfortable place to sleep, just like she said.”
Jennifer laughs. “Great, Isaac. Your wife's come down with Stockholm syndrome.”
“Cynthia...” begins Isaac, turning to face his wife. “We can't allow this girl to keep us here, like toys to be played with when boredom strikes her. We can't accept this as our fate.”
“No, no... I... I just mean that she is treating us nicely, all things considered. She hasn't hurt any of us. I just think maybe we shouldn't try to escape. Maybe we just let her have her fun and eventually she gets bored, changes us back to normal and lets us go? What if we do try escaping, we fail, and she catches us? How upset do you think she would be? We haven't seen her when she's upset, we don't know what she would do if she was angry with us. Take away our food and water? Our bed? Maybe she would keep us in a small box, sealed in the dark under a closed lid because she couldn't trust us to not try escaping again? Or maybe she would do something worse. All I'm saying is maybe it's safer for us if we don't try anything that might upset her. Right now we're all together, we have food, and we have shelter. Trying to escape could jeopardize all of that. We have to decide, is it really worth the risk?”
“You make some good points, Cynthia, but overall, I don't agree” says Michael. “No, none of us have been hurt. Yet. Who's to say that won't change down the road? These are the things we need to be thinking about. We already know Claire doesn't trust us to just go back to our lives like nothing happened if she returned us to normal. We can't just wait for her to change us back of her own volition, because it's not going to happen. And yes, Claire has so far been feeding and 'taking care' of us, but what if somewhere down the road she decides it's too much of an inconvenience for her to continue doing so? What happens to us then? I'd much rather take my chances with an escape plan than with staying here.”
As the group continues to weigh their options, or lack thereof, the sound of the latch being undone can be heard before the attic stairs descend. Soon, Claire comes into view. Her feet are now clad in her black flip flops, the heels of which slap loudly at her soles as she walks across the wood floor of the attic towards the shrunken picnic table in the center.
“Hello again, little ones!” she says, smiling down on the tiny people after stopping in front of the table. The tiny men and women stare back up at her. Claire turns to her right and walks to a pile of boxes. She grabs a shoebox much like the one her guests have been using as a bed and shakes it to make sure it's empty before walking back to the group and kneeling down in front of them.
“I thought I'd be used to seeing you by now but you guys still look so cute down there! I'm sorry about earlier, if things got a little dark. I just wanted you to try and see things differently, for how they really are.” The group is less focused on what Claire is saying and more concerned with the shoebox in her hands as they contemplate what its presence could mean for them. “I've been taking good care of you since I saved you and it makes me a little sad when you don't seem to appreciate it, that's all. I didn't mean to scare any of you down there, but I needed you to understand.”
“What's the box for?” yells Michael.
Claire smiles sweetly. “Well, I was thinking... it's such a nice day, and you guys are probably a little sick of spending all your time cooped up in this attic. Why don't we go outside and spend a little time together? Wouldn't you like that, little people, to get some fresh air and a little sun on this nice summer day?”
Claire stands to her full height and removes the lid from the cardboard box before placing it on its side down on the floor near the picnic table. “Go ahead, get in the box and I'll take you outside for a little bit.”
The men and women slowly rise from the table and make their way into the box. The idea of spending some time outside for the first time in a few days is a rather pleasant one, and even if it wasn't, they'd have found themselves reluctantly marching into the box regardless because although it was being presented to them now as such, it wasn't as though they really had a choice in the matter.
Claire watches as the tiny group makes its way into the box down on the floor by her feet. Once everyone is inside, she leans down and grips the sides of the box with her hands. “Careful, little ones, I have to tilt the box now.” Using her hands, she gently rests the shoebox onto its intended position, and though she was gentle, she still causes the people inside to tumble about briefly as the back wall of cardboard becomes their floor.
“There. We'll be outside in no time!” Claire places the lid onto the shoebox and gently lifts it from the ground. The group inside would have preferred the lid to have been left off during their journey. Within the darkness, they listen to the familiar sound of Claire's flip flops slapping at her feet and clacking back down against the floor with each step she takes towards the stairs, down them, and through her home. The box shakes a little more than usual as the sound of a door opening and closing greets their ears. Michael and the others assume Claire altered the way she was holding the box so that she would have a free hand to open the door with, which would account for the momentary extra shaking.
Having exited through her home's back door, Claire walks across her lawn towards the white beach towel, still laying out in the yard where she had left it after first discovering her shrunken neighbors and their friends in Jim's truck. Her sunglasses also rest on the lawn inches away from the towel.
After reaching it, Claire sets the cardboard box down very carefully onto the grass to the left of the towel. Next, she slips her feet out of her flip flops, leaving the now empty sandals near the box. She enjoys the feeling of her bare skin touching down on the grass beneath her. After rubbing her feet along the grass a few times to savor the sensation, she kneels down in front of the box and removes the lid.
Bright light pours into the shoebox and the men and women know the bumpy ride out of the house is over as they find themselves staring up and into the beautiful young face of their captor. Suddenly, one of her massive hands enters the sky above them and they back away to the sides of the box as it begins coming down. It touches down onto the bottom of the box with its palm facing up. “Ladies first!” Claire announces from above.
Reluctantly, the five women in the group slowly approach the girl's hand and begin climbing onto the soft skin of her palm. Once they're all on board, the hand moves through the air and is lowered towards the towel. Claire tilts her hand gently, and her passengers drop onto the soft white fabric below.
She returns her hand to the inside of the box. “Okay, boys. Your turn!” After the tiny men climb into her hand, Claire begins to lower herself onto the towel, positioning her body exactly as it had been laying when the shrunken truck first arrived on her lawn.
In front of Claire's face, the tiny women watch her hand hover above the towel after she finishes laying down, waiting for the hand to release their boyfriends and husbands and deliver them onto the white fabric below.
Instead of doing this, Claire reaches out behind her and tilts her hand, dropping the tiny bodies onto the soft, supple skin of the bottoms of her bare feet laying pressed together on the towel. The men tumble down her skin, stopping just in time to keep them from rolling off of her pretty toes. Michael, Isaac, and Scott find themselves on her left foot, Keith and Jim on her right.
Claire reaches to her right and takes her black sunglasses into her fingers. She lifts them to her face and puts them on, concealing her alluring blue eyes behind the dark lenses.
The men begin to sit up and collect themselves after their bout of tumbling and rolling. Jim grunts groggily and looks to Michael “What is it with this girl and her feet?”
Standing on the other gigantic foot, Isaac surveys his surroundings, taking in the sight of a lawn that stretches on and on, seemingly endlessly. Far in the distance, or at least far relative to his current size, Isaac spots a snail slowly crawling its way along through the grass, its brown body under the protection of an even darker brown shell. Unsure of his accuracy thanks to the distance between himself and the creature, Isaac estimates that it must be at around the size of a large bull compared to him, possibly larger. He continues watching as the mollusk inches its way across the massive backyard before turning to face the other men. “Hmmm... you see this, Keith? We're out of the attic, are we not? Perhaps your hope of escaping the situation has returned?”
“What are you doing?!” Brandi yells up to Claire out of fear for her boyfriend and the rest of the men.
Without moving the rest of her body, Claire turns her head to address the tiny men behind her. “You boys wouldn't think of running away and making me sad, would you? Especially not while I have your little ladies here with me, right?”
The men now know that even though they're out of the attic, escaping today is out of the question. They can't go off in search of some form of help and leave their women in the clutches of Claire.
Confident that she's so easily persuaded the men against wandering off and away from her, Claire returns her gaze to the tiny women in front of her. The sunglasses on her face hide her eyes, making the comparatively massive younger woman even more intimidating to them. She watches as the tiny bodies gently shake before her, no doubt out of fear. “Awww, don't be scared. I thought we should have a little girl time. I bet you've been dying for a break from your boyfriends.” The tiny women continue to stare up at Claire's face, trying desperately to see her eyes through her sunglasses. Instead, the only sight that returns to their vision is their own reflections in the gigantic lenses. Claire giggles. “Come on, sit down, relax, and just enjoy this nice weather.” The women comply and seat themselves down onto the fabric of the towel.
“Did you like the soap and water I brought into the attic for you?”
Cynthia looks to the other women to see if they're going to answer. They just continue staring silently into Claire's looming face. “Y...yes, we did. Th..thank you for it” Cynthia says nervously, realizing the other women aren't going to answer the question.
“Awww. You're welcome, Cynthia!”
“Y...you remembered my name?”
Claire smiles. “Of course I did, little one. Cynthia. A pretty name for a pretty little lady.” Jennifer rolls her eyes.
“Th...thanks” replies a blushing Cynthia.
“I remember all your names. That's Amy and Brandi on your right, Alexia on your left, and Jennifer on her left.”
Claire turns her head to again address the tiny men behind her. “Boys? Since you're already back there, I know you wouldn't mind rubbing my pretty feet for me, right? It's SUCH a nice day out here, a little foot rub would help me enjoy it even more!” She faces forward and flashes a smile down onto the little women seated before her gaze.
“Fuck that!” Keith yells as he rises to his feet in anger, though the distance between the tiny man and Claire's ears is too great for her to hear his objection. As he stands, Keith's shoes sink slightly into the luxuriously plush, soft skin of the young woman's pale soles. “I don't care HOW big she is, I'm not doing this bitch any more favors!”
Claire rests there for a moment looking over the women before letting out a sigh of disappointment and turning her head to address the men on her feet once more. “UGH. I don't feel anything back there, boys. If this job is too hard for you, maybe I'll just have to reschedule girl time and put the little ladies to work back there to help you out, hmmm?”
Growing tired of waiting for the men to get to work, Claire scrunches her soles, turning the landscape of her feet into a sea of deep wrinkles. As the ground beneath him shifts, the defiant Keith loses his footing and falls face first onto the cushiony surface below where his nose and mouth are treated to the scent and slight taste of lotion mixed faintly with sweat.
Jim can't help but laugh before he stands and extends an arm out to Keith, laying prone on a bed of wrinkles. “Need a hand, Keith?” Keith swats Jim's hand away from him and stands up on his own with a look of intense anger plastered across his face.
“Look, we'd better just do it. Get it over with, without having her drop the rest of us back here and put them through it too” says Michael.
“Yeah” says Scott. “I'm not gonna hear Jennifer bitch all night about how she had to spend all day rubbing a giant pair of feet and how it's all our fault. I'm with Michael, let's just get this over with.”
Scott's knees sink into the pliant flesh as he lowers himself down onto them. He takes his hands and presses them deep into the incredibly soft pale skin and begins to rub them back and forth. Hesitantly, Michael, Jim, and Isaac lower themselves down into similar positions and join Scott in the task of rubbing the gigantic feet. Scott looks to Keith, continuing to stand angrily off to the side while the others work. “Keith, come on, man. If we don't do a good enough job here, you know she's gonna grab Alexia in her giant hand, lift her all the way back here, and drop her down on her feet just like she did to us. Do you really want Alexia to have to go through that if you can help it?”
Hesitantly, Keith finally joins the other men, preserving the anger on his face as he works.
Claire smiles and her eyes light up behind her sunglasses. Slowly but surely, the men have begun to work, she can feel it. Satisfied, she returns her attention to the tiny women seated in front of her face on the towel.
Michael presses down and works both hands into the soft flesh of his younger neighbor's feet. Though voluptuously soft, her skin is too thick to adequately wrap his hands around and take into his grip. He forces his hands deep into the meat of Claire's soles and rubs them, up and down, back and forth, over and over again. He watches his hands carefully as they continuously run along the vast expanse of skin, nervous each time they encounter one of the many unavoidable wrinkles. He worries about what might happen if he were to get a hand caught in one of the wrinkles of Claire's feet. If she were to twitch ever so slightly and manipulate her skin into wrapping around his tiny extremity, consuming it in a fleshy fold, how much pressure could such a small action on her part be capable of exerting onto him? Would his entire hand become trapped inside the deep wrinkle? Would he be unable to pull it out even after employing his full strength? Worse yet, could the pressure be enough to crush his hand between her skin, breaking his bones?
Michael shudders and shakes his head, attempting to clear such thoughts from his mind as he continues on with his work. He looks up and up, his eyes wandering over the gigantic soft soles as they slope upwards higher and higher, covered with wrinkles all the way up to the apex, Claire's heels, which rest in the sky above like pale hills. Behind him, her immense toes occasionally twitch gently, perhaps even involuntarily.
Claire lays still as she perceives the touch of ten tiny hands pressing into and rubbing her feet behind her. In some spots, the feeling is weak, and in other much more sensitive areas of her skin, she experiences an almost tickling-like sensation. But the feeling of the tiny hands pressing into and pampering her flesh combined with the knowledge that she can so easily manipulate five grown men into carrying out her will enhances her satisfaction tenfold.
Claire moans softly, expressing pleasure, startling the women as her warm breath washes over them. “Mmmmmmmmmm... that feels SOOOOO good. Your little boyfriends and husbands give an amazing foot massage, ladies.”
The women sit and stare back into Claire's face, anger growing inside of them as their men pamper this beautiful younger woman and there is nothing they can do to stop it. They've been feeling small and powerless ever since the incident back on Michael and Amy's lawn, but they feel even more so in this moment.
“Oh, wow! Mmmmm! I hope this isn't making you jealous or anything, girls. But you wouldn't believe how great their tiny little hands feel back there. Oh yeah, right there, that's the spot!”
Claire giggles. “I'll bet most of you ladies wish you were me right now, don't you? With five hard working men to take care of your feet? Oh, you'd be in heaven, you can't even imagine how good this feels. Best foot massage EVER!”
The flames of Amy's jealousy burn much higher than those of any of the other women. While the jealousy of the others stems solely from their significant others serving another woman, Amy's jealousy is once again rooted in envy. Envy of what Claire has, of what Claire is to the shrunken people. Amy is suffering as she watches the young woman soak in pleasure granted unto her by her fellow tiny people. She wants nothing more right now than to experience what Claire is. It's just not fair.
Many moments pass as Claire continues to enjoy the gratifying sensation of the men rubbing her feet while she lays relaxed on her back lawn under the warm sun of a quiet day. Claire yawns, takes a deep breath, and sighs. “Sorry, boys. I think we might have to call it a day. I don't want to accidentally fall asleep out here again. I doubt I'd be so lucky to wake up again to find a tiny truck full of little people.” she laughs.
The men stop working their hands into her flesh after hearing her words. Suddenly, her feet begin wriggling and scrunching, causing their tiny bodies to flounder about on top of her soft skin. Her wrinkles pass along all over their bodies like waves against a sailing ship, almost as though her feet are repaying the men with a massage of their own for their hard work.
Still laying down, Claire burrows her right hand and forearm beneath the towel. She positions her hand directly underneath the five seated women and lifts them into the air. She dumps them into her left hand and rolls her eyes as they scream before depositing them into the shoebox. Next, she lifts her feet up onto her toes, turning her soles into an even steeper slope until the men laying on top of them roll off of her skin and onto the towel below. She gets to her knees and turns around before picking the men up and dropping them into the box with the women. “We definitely have to do that again, little ones. But maybe with lotion next time!” With all ten tiny passengers inside, she places the lid onto the box. Her feet take a few steps through the grass as they step off of the white towel and travel towards her flip flops. They wriggle their way into the sandals and Claire picks the box up off of the ground before carrying it back towards her home, leaving the towel on the lawn.
Claire enters her home and closes the door behind her. She removes her sunglasses from her face and tosses them onto the kitchen table as she passes by. She travels through the hall and makes her way towards the attic stairs.