Alice woke slowly, her head was ringing, her vision a bit foggy, she thought she could taste a bit of bile in the back of her throat. She shook her head in an attempt to clear it and get a sense of where she was. She recognized her surroundings immediately and groaned. She was on a large silver field; it was the pad that was made specifically to absorb the radiation put off by her family’s minimizer.

She remembered it now; her older brother had been waiting for her at the front door, the shrinking device had been ready to fire.

As if on cue the landscape behind her changed, a massive wall of deep blue had filled up her entire vision as she turned, it was his shirt.

Alice had shrunk before, however Jake had decided to shrink her to what seemed like microscopic levels. She looked upward, thousands of miles away his face, a bit blurry, looked extremely worried and apologetic.

“I’m going to give you one chance, one chance, to explain why it is that the literal moment I got home from an already shitty day at school, you used the minimizer on me as I walked in the door and made me so small that I’m invisible to the human eye”.

Alice spoke slowly, her speech was calm, but behind that sentence all the fury in the world was brewing. She heard her voice emanating from the computer screen above her, which to her might as well have been a giant silver wall stretching for miles and miles in either direction. It was also the only way her fool of an older brother could communicate with her at her current size. The microphone hovering nearby was able to pick up even the smallest of noises, like the voice of a shrunken girl for instance. Clearly he’d set everything up to be able to communicate with her, which meant he had some serious explaining to do.

Jake scratched his head, embarrassed, and despite the fact that currently he could inhale his sister if he chose to, he was utterly terrified of the microscopic girl that he barely even knew was there.

He scooted a bit closer to the metal slab, he’d been extra careful to shrink his sister on top of it so he could find her and fill her in on the unfortunate situation he was now in.

“W-well you see….it’s about mom…a-and Becca….” He started, speaking half to the platform he knew she was on and half to the screen that actually had an image of her on it, unsure where to direct his full attention.

“Where are they?” Alice asked, hopefully one of them could return her to normal size and shed some light on why Jake was acting so strange.

“W-well see…that’s the thing…I’m not one hundred percent sure…”

Alice was confused, needless to say, and annoyed, why couldn’t Jake just give her a straightforward answer?

“Okay well…where do you think they are?” Alice asked him. She immediately wished she hadn’t.

Jake scooted backwards slightly, and before she could protest, Jake had brought his dirty, meaty foot upwards, level with the table she was on. The world in front of her changed, the massive landscape became a wrinkled foot, which was dirty and sweaty, a wave of cheesy foot stink emanating from it, the wave washed over the small pad Alice stood on.

“Ugh! God Jake that’s not funny!” Alice said, holding her nose and reeling away, not that a microscopic girl like her could make much of a difference by moving anywhere. Throughout their whole lives, Jake had always had the raunchiest smelling feet Alice had ever smelled, according to her mother Jake’s foot stink came from his father, whom her children had met on a few brief occasions.

“Quit messing around and tell me where they are!” She shouted, her nose held shut by her fingers and her eyes watering. At this size, Jake’s feet were practically a toxic hazard.

“I uh….I think I just did….” Jake said slowly.

Alice was completely baffled.

“What do you mean?”

“Here” Jake put his foot in his lap and stretched an arm forward over her head, flipping a dial on the computer screen. It changed from a close up of Alice to video footage, Alice’s older sister Becca was in focus, dressed for housework, her brown hair tied in a neat little bun.

“Mom, do we really have to do this?” the twenty year old asked the camera, apparently a headset that their mother had been wearing.

“Yes!” came their mother Amy’s voice, “I’ve asked him a thousand times to do it and he won’t listen! So while he’d at school well just get in there and get the job done!”

“But mom, you know how bad Jake’s feet stink!” Becca complained, “and at this size…”

“Here”, an arm thrust a small mask forward and Becca took it, strapping it on. “These should make it a little better”

Becca groaned, “I always hated his sneakers”.

Alice gasped, she was beginning to understand, but kept watching, Jake sped up the video, stopping as their mother and older sister revealed in one shot that they had shrunk themselves for household chores, as was usual, and what their destination was, a pair of ratty old converse all stars that Jake had been wearing for two years.

Alice was shocked. “No! You mean they-“

“Watch” Jake said, guiltily.

The video sped up again, Alice watched as her mother and sibling climbed into Jake’s shoe with a few buckets and mops, and began to get to work on cleaning it. They looked to be around 1/8th of an inch tall each, and despite that they had actually almost finished Jake’s first shoe.

The speed up stopped and the camera shook.

Boom

“What was that!?” came Becca’s worried voice.

“I’m not sure…” Her mother replied, the camera panned around to the heel of Jake’s shoe, light pouring in.

“MOM? BECCA? I’M HOOOOOOOME!!!” Jake’s voice was deafening, even the audio capture made it sound as though he were a god.

“Oh god! Mom! We have to get out of here!” Becca shouted, grabbing her mother’s arm. The two shrunken women left their cleaning supplies at the toe end of Jake’s shoe, and the camera shook violently with Jake’s footsteps, as well as their mother’s running.

Just as they reached his heel, the camera panned upwards.

Alice held her hands over her mouth in horror.

Five hungry, sweaty toes had filled the opening of the shoe. Jake seemed to be scratching or cleaning them on it, as they wiggled and slid across it, bits of dirt and lint raining onto the helpless women inside.

“RUN MOM!” Becca shouted, the two girls turned and sprinted back from where they’d come from, they could hear sobbing on the audio, but the footage was dark, the only moments of light came when their mother would turn around and catch a glimpse of her son’s giant foot as it chased them to the toe end of the shoe. Then nothing. The footage had stopped, the headset had broken.

Alice had tears in her eyes.

“Are they…?”

Jake shook his head and flipped another screen attached to the minimizer in her direction. It showed to pulsing heartbeats, Labeled “Becca” and “Amy”.

Alice breathed a heavy sigh of relief. They were alive.

“Thank god” She said. Alice was glad her mother was so careful whenever she used the minimizer on herself.

“I went for a walk with them in there, somehow they survived” He said. “But their too tiny, I can’t see them.”

“Oh no…” Alice said, taking a step backwards.

“Alice you’re the only one who can find them! Once you do, I’ll get all three of you off of my feet!”

Alice groaned she felt sick to her stomach; her brother’s feet had no small part in that.

“But your feet-“

“I know! They stink! But don’t you think that should be all the more reason to go down there and get them out!” Jake shouted, shaking poor Alice, forcing her to sit to avoid toppling over. “They’ve been down there awhile now, and I don’t know how much longer they’ve got! Starvation, dehydration, not to mention the smell…”

“O-okay…” Alice said, swallowing nervously.

Jake nodded, not looking any more thrilled about this than she was. A large pair of silver tweezers entered her view, and Alice eyed them nervously. Luckily Alice was just large enough for Jake to see, barley even a speck, he pinched the tweezers around her.

“You okay?” He asked.

She nodded.

“There isn’t another headset, so I won’t know where you are once you’re down there” Jake said, “I’ll try and keep movement to a minimum.”

“Okay, where should I start?” Alice asked, looking down, she noticed Jake had propped his foot up in his lap, his sole facing up. His toes flexed and wiggled and Alice watched an ocean of dirty wrinkles move.

“I’d start with my sole; they’re probably stuck in one of my foot wrinkles.” He looked up at her, “You ready?”

She swallowed again and gave a nod.

“Hold your nose little sis” He said, and began to lower her.

Alice felt fear grip her as she neared her brother’s giant, stinky sole.