"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.