The six senior partners and their executive assistants all had offices on the top floor. In addition to the kitchens, restrooms, and copy/supply rooms we had on other floors, there was a large conference room with a panoramic view window for client meetings. None of these, however, were my target.
The executive conference room lay at the end of a long, marble-floored hallway that was directly observed by at least two of the executive assistants and which ended at a pair of brass-plated double doors that no one I knew had ever touched. The doors were of course covered by security cameras.
By about 8pm, the ambient sounds of people engaged in office work had died off, but I let my uncertainty paralyze me on that shelf for a long time. It was almost 9pm before I worked up the nerve to drop down to the floor and creep to the threshold of the copy room and peer down the hallway.
I couldn’t see or hear anyone, and the lights were at their “after hours” minimum setting. Hugging the wall, I started the long trek around the perimeter of the building towards the executive conference room. I was halfway done with the circuit when I realized that had I been full-sized I would have tripped the motion sensor, bringing up the lights and betraying my presence to the security system.
I still hadn’t seen or heard anyone by the time I reached the double doors leading to the executive conference room. There was no way for me to pass underneath the brass-plated doors, as they opened inward and extended below the level of the exterior corridor, closing flush against the lip of the threshold.
The long hallway was barren of any furniture or appointments that might have hidden me. I walked back to where the marble hallway joined the carpeted perimeter track. Opposite the marbled hall stood a potted hibiscus, and lying on the floor underneath, I was concealed by the base.
Cold and exhausted, I began to doze off. I had no watch but I imagine at least a couple of hours passed before I felt vibrations in the floor and the hallway lighting flickered to full-strength. Alone or in pairs, the giant board members thudded past me and turned down the marble hall, their steps echoing like thunder. From my depressed perspective, their attire didn’t seem different from what they usually wore to the office. Thirteenth and last, Olivia swanned by in a flowing wrap of reds and purples.
The appearance of my tormentor momentarily stunned me until I realized that Olivia would be the last through the brass doors. I scrambled out from under the planter and prayed my tiny bare feet didn’t echo too loudly on the marble as I ran to catch up with Olivia.
Even though I was flat-out sprinting, Olivia passed through the doors well before I reached them. By some mercy, however, the doors did not close behind her, and I easily dropped over the threshold into a dark antechamber. Two dim wall lamps showed empty benches on either side of the vestibule and another pair of doors at the far end. The second pair of doors were closed and solid oak, but there was sufficient clearance for me to slide underneath.
Crawling sideways on my stomach, I looked up into the next room and froze. On either side of the oak doors stood Olivia and another partner, named Richard, both in the middle of stripping off all their clothes. Apparently there were shelves and hangers next to the doors where the other partners had already stowed their clothes. Staring up at Olivia as her titanic legs lifted out of her panties and then thudded down onto the stone floor, I was plunged into the familiar pit of awestruck terror and desire.
Tearing my gaze away, I looked up at the equally enormous Richard. It was intimidatingly obvious what sorcerous enhancements he had sought. I guess that’s what happens when people call you “Dick” your whole life. As Olivia and Richard turned and joined the other partners, I pulled myself out from under the door and stood up.
The room was larger than the client conference room on the other side of the building. The black stone floor was rough and unpolished. The only illumination came from a cluster of ceiling spotlights focused on a hexagonal sunken area, in the middle of which sat a black stone cube.
I hugged the wall in the shadows, trying to keep from being stepped on by giant naked partners, while still observing details of the meeting. Many of the partners had taken positions along the perimeter of the sunken area, some squatting or sitting on the floor and others still standing. Any conversation was subdued.
I walked towards one side of the sunken area that was relatively unoccupied by naked giants. I crept towards the edge of the lighted hex, trying to stay in the shadows, and peered down into the shallow pit. There seemed to be some kind of writing or runes carved into the floor. The characters included both straight lines and curls, but they didn’t belong to any alphabet I had ever seen.
My survey was interrupted by a loud grunt from something in the shadows on the far side of the sunken area. Then came a series of snorts that couldn’t have been emitted by a human nose. Any remaining doubts about the folly of my plan to spy on the board meeting rapidly dissolved.
I scurried back to the wall. One of the partners thudded through shadows and walked toward the light, and even before she stepped down into the sunken area, I could tell from her curvy silhouette that it was Olivia. She took a position at the vertex of two sides of the hexagon and folded her legs underneath her.
Lily, a senior partner with dazzling red hair, entered the lit area carrying a tall potted flower. She set it on the stone block and when she stepped away I could see that it was a white orchid. Then my heart leapt into my mouth when she walked towards the source of the inhuman snuffling sounds.
A startled squeal cut through the chamber as the immense woman clearly struggled with the equally massive creature. Then they stumbled into the light as Lily hauled on a length of chain attached to the leather collar of a corpulently uncooperative pig.
Anyone looking at Lily’s slight frame would find it hard to believe that she could budge such a large swine, yet she steadily dragged the complaining animal to the stone block, where she looped the chain through a steel ring and then secured it with what looked like a bike lock.
My sense of foreboding deepened. When all the other partners were kneeling around the block inside the sunken hexagon, Lily kindled a torch and walked along the wall, lighting other torches that had been installed in previously unseen sconces. I was cowering underneath one such fixture, and I was mesmerized by the sight of Lily’s giant, naked, torchlit figure advancing and halting one massive foot in front of me as she reached up to light the torch above. The shadows I had been hiding in were chased away by the torchlight, but no one looked in my direction. Nevertheless, as soon as Lily had moved on, I darted into the black between the torches.
The pig clearly feared Lily, and it protested when she returned to the sunken hexagon and began to slowly pour a white granular substance onto the floor in a deliberate pattern. Probably twenty minutes passed while Lily trickled out the powder, the partners remaining totally silent and still. When she had returned to her starting point, Lily stepped back into the shadows and then returned to the light holding a large bowl that looked to be made of or plated with silver. She also held a wicked-looking knife.
The pig squealed again, mimicking the sound emitted by my soul. Lily began chanting rhythmically in a harsh language unknown but dismayingly familiar to me. She stepped in front of Olivia and changed verses, then paused for Olivia to respond with a verse of her own. When her response was complete, Olivia held out her hand to Lily. Without hesitation, Lily grabbed Olivia’s wrist and slashed her hand with the knife.
Olivia’s arm shuddered from the impact but she neither flinched nor cried out. Lily put the blade between her own teeth and knelt while she held the silver bowl under Olivia’s still-outstretched hand to catch her blood. A staggeringly large volume flowed out of the wound. Lily finally stood up and moved on to the next partner while Olivia brought her wound to her lips. She was both facing away from me and strongly backlit, but I thought I saw a sparkle or a glow when she kissed her palm. In any event, no more blood flowed from her hand.
Lily repeated this procedure with the other eleven partners. As each partner made an offering of blood, they joined Lily in the otherworldly chanting.
Finally Lily looked down at the white granules on the floor as she carefully stepped over them to approach the stone block. The pig strained to get away from Lily, but she ignored it and placed the bowl on top of the block. Then she completed the ritual by cutting her own palm for the final offering.
After “kissing” her wound closed, Lily laid the knife down next to the bowl, then touched her finger to the surface of the blood and said “Ah-kash.” A sickly greenish-yellow flame leapt up from the bowl, and heavy smoke started to swirl up into a sinuous cloud.
Lily turned and stepped back over the pattern of white substance. When she rejoined the other partners, she waved her arm and the ceiling lights switched off, leaving the chamber illuminated only by the wall torches and the eerie green flames fueled by the bowl of blood.
At this point my brain pulled me aside and said it was time to leave. What did you expect to find? I asked myself. Even if I were full-size, I would be terrified by the scene before me. And yet I didn’t flee, because that would mean resigning myself to living with these monsters forever.
In the increased shadows, I crept forward until I reached the lip of the shallow pit, just behind where Olivia was kneeling and swaying. The drop to the floor of the sunken area wasn’t much more than twelve inches, but of course to me this was significant.
I found a cranny in the rough stone and fit the end of the paper-clip grapple that Yvonne gave me into the slight concavity. At my scale, the stone was sufficiently porous that I could work the hook in even more. I uncoiled the string, gave the hook a couple of tentative tugs, then let myself drop over the edge into the sunken hexagon.
Between me and the stone block towered the awesome nude figure of Olivia, her giant round ass nestled atop her heels. Even then, in the most perilous circumstances, I found the appetite to lust after this mountainous woman who had cursed me. So carefully had she tuned my libido that I feared only the ritual chanting kept her from hearing my thoughts of desire.
I shook my head to focus on the task at hand, hoping the light from the blood-flame was too weak to reveal my tiny figure as I approached the pattern of white substance on the floor. I first detected the granules when I stepped on them with my bare feet. To me they felt like very sharp gravel, and when I knelt down and grabbed a handful, I confirmed that they were in fact salt crystals. Even in the dim flickering light I could determine that the salt had precisely filled the carved runes or signs that circled the stone block.
A thunderous bestial bark sounded immediately above me, and my legs collapsed both in shock and from the gust of foul air. My heart was still racing when I realized that the pig had finally detected something that didn’t frighten it.
Squinting through the gloam, I could see that the pig’s chain kept it several feet away, but that wouldn’t prevent Lily or another partner from wondering what had spooked it. Working quickly but not (I hoped) frenetically, I started to dig the salt out of the engraved runes on the stone, scattering the white crystals onto the unmarked surface. I kept going until I had created a path of empty runes all the way through the pattern to the inner circumference. The pig continued its guttural exhortations, and I kept expecting to feel the vibration of a giant’s approaching footsteps, but all I heard was the partners’ constant rhythmic chanting. I decided I had done all I could do.
I had to remind myself not to run as I crept back towards my climbing line. I couldn’t help stealing a glance at the colossal Olivia, her dreadlocks and tits swaying in time to the chant. Some self-destructive part of me suggested crawling between her knees and finding someplace warm, but I snapped my head down and kept moving toward my escape.
I scaled the twelve-inch cliff and collected my hook and line. Just then the green flame in the bowl became brighter by a couple of orders of magnitude, and the volume of the partners’ chant increased to match it.
I abandoned stealth and simply took off running for the doors. Disturbing shadows played on the wall in front of me. I reached the doors and was about to lie down to slide back underneath when I heard a sound behind me that was both unearthly and yet somehow familiar. I started to turn around, but then I felt a loud voice in my head shout, “No!” and my upper body flung itself on the floor. I flattened my body and pulled myself into the relatively bright light of the antechamber.
I stood up and blinked rapidly, hoping to find that the brass doors were still open. I was dismayed to see them shut, but my stomach turned to ice when I saw the pair of enormous feet of someone sitting on one of the benches to one side of the room, and I looked up to see the face of Zorah looking at me with growing delight.
“Well, well. Olivia didn’t tell me you were invited,” she snorted. “What do you think she’ll say when I show you to her?”
“No!” I cried. “Zorah, please don’t!”
“I think you’re right,” she purred, bending quickly to snatch me up. “Let’s go somewhere and. . . revisit our professional relationship.”
Zorah reached up with her free hand and pulled down on a latch connected to spring-loaded bolts that spanned almost the full height of one brass-plated door and slid out of six-inch holes in the floor and ceiling, permitting the door to open inward. She carried me back into the marble hallway and I heard the door close behind her and the bolts slide home.
Zorah held me up to her face and scrutinized me with undisguised predatory glee. “What a cute outfit!” she fawned. “Did your mommy Yvonne make it for you?”
I tried to hide my shock, but I clearly failed.
“What,” said Zorah, “you thought her little dollie fetish was some big secret? Don’t worry; I’ll make sure Olivia hears all about her role in tonight’s expedition, and then I’ll have you all to myself.”
The pig in the executive conference room started squealing like a banshee. Even through two sets of heavy doors, the sound was nerve-wracking.
“We have to leave now!” I shouted. “Zorah, please!”
“Oh, I know all about what goes on up here,” sneered Zorah. “The only one who has to worry is you.”
She opened her mouth slightly and her tongue delicately touched her upper incisors. She raised her eyebrows and tightened her grip on my torso, forcing the air from my lungs. She started slowly strolling down the hallway, but then the sounds from the pig were drowned out by a monstrous roar followed by several screams that might have been human. I tried to tell Zorah to run, but I had no breath.
“Olivia will get rid of you after this stunt,” preened Zorah, invested in the moment, “but I’m sure I can convince her to let me keep you.”
A deafening boom, like the earth itself cracking open, shook the entire building. The brass doors burst outward, shattering the hinges and threshold and cracking the marble floor. Black and green smoke billowed into the hallway. Zorah still had her back to the door, so I saw it first.
Or at least part of it; it filled the doorway. I didn’t see any eyes, but it had a circular mouth like a lamprey, easily five feet across, opening and constricting with receding rows of teeth. The body or appendage undulated like a giant worm, but it was supported by multiple hard legs like a centipede. Two wicked-looking mandibles on either side of the mouth made an all-too-familiar clicking noise.
Zorah turned and screamed. The thing’s mouth opened and a tentacle or a tongue shot forward ten feet and wrapped around Zorah’s neck. Zorah grabbed at the slimy rope thing, dropping me instantly. I bounced off her straining leg and hit the marble floor hard. My shoulder and hip screamed in pain, but I pushed off from the floor and desperately rolled towards the wall trying to avoid Zorah’s frantic footfalls.
A nauseating slick flapping sound erupted from the thing’s gullet, and blind panic forced me to my feet. Limping and occasionally stumbling, I ran pell-mell down the hallway, listening to the thing roar and gurgle while Zorah’s screams grew increasingly shrill and primal. Then, horribly, Zorah’s screaming was abruptly muffled, and my throbbing hip gave out. I slumped against the wall and I turned to look back down the hall to witness a sight I shall never forget as long as I live.
The thing hadn’t advanced very far, but Zorah had been dragged all the way back. The tubular maw had engulfed her head, neck, and upper arms, and she was bent forward at the waist. The thing’s mandibles closed and pierced her at the ribcage. Then the whole monstrous worm—to me the size of Godzilla—arched upward, lifting Zorah off her feet. Its slimy segmented body started convulsing, drawing Zorah further and further into its tract. As its toothy pucker slid over her tits, belly, ass, and thighs, Zorah’s legs never stopped kicking. I watched her flailing feet disappear into that putrid gorge, accompanied by a wet crunching sound.
And then I ran.
I will be forever haunted by the slurping and clicking noises that followed me down the hall, but the thing itself did not pursue me. I don’t know if I was too small to see (I don’t think it had eyes), or if Zorah had sated its appetite (I doubt it). Perhaps it only came to collect from those who had already sold their souls (i.e., lawyers).
I kept running, heedless of the pain in my legs and sides, ignoring the phlegm creeping up my throat. My pace fell off after I rounded the corner, but I never stopped moving back towards my hiding place. I didn’t see anyone else on my way back to the copy room, and I was so tired and sore that I almost pulled myself up onto the shelf where I could pass out. But there was one last thing I had to try before I would give up and resign myself to Zorah’s fate.
My phone was still on the floor behind the printer where Yvonne had hidden it. I felt like Tony Stark manipulating the giant touch screen with both hands. I unlocked it and pulled up the audio recordings. Here goes nothing, I thought, and started the playback.
“Kahp-hasheena,” came Yvonne’s voice out of the speaker.
I had hoped for the expected pain in my chest and the blurring of my vision, but in my fatigue and terror I had forgotten a) I was wearing doll clothes, and b) I was standing in a six-inch-wide space between the printer stand and the cupboard. Accordingly, I was probably less injured when Zorah dropped me onto the marble floor than when I burst through Malibu Ken’s sport ensemble and returned to full-size in the copy room.
My first reflex after knocking over the printer stand was to lie perfectly still and listen to see if anyone or anything was coming to investigate the noise. After I had listened as long as I dared, I rapidly dressed and then peeked around the corner. I could see and smell that some smoke had drifted throughout the floor, and I concluded that the fire alarm must either be deactivated or malfunctioning.
Mindful of the security cameras around every corner, I pulled on the ski mask I had tucked in my bag that morning, then walked as quickly and as quietly as I could for the door to the stairway. We were over twenty floors up, but they always say to use the stairs in case of a fire.
As I limped out of the stairway into the building lobby, I noted that Yvonne had sent me a text almost six hours previously: “Text me when you get back.”
I walked outside into the chill night air. I crossed the street and saw the green flames licking the windows of the top floor. Still no sirens.
I texted Yvonne back: “Good news. I think we’re all out of a job. Let’s do coffee. Soon.”
* * *
The top three floors burned out completely before the fire department could put out the fire. They had to use a special retardant designed for chemical fires. They only found bodies for half the partners, but the executive assistants testified that all the partners had been expected to attend. The news didn’t say whether they found the pig.
The firm’s insurance paid us all a very small severance, and most of us pounded the pavement until we got new jobs. Happily, both Yvonne and I got jobs at the same firm. Our new practice mainly deals with defending churches whose pastors have been accused of sexually assaulting child parishioners. You know, honest work.
Unfortunately, our curses didn’t vanish when the old firm went up in smoke. Yvonne still rises and sleeps on East Coast time, but she got the new firm to accommodate her schedule. Sometimes I come in early, too, to keep her company.
Yvonne’s marriage to Jeff seems to be holding steady, but during our recent brief spell of unemployment, she managed to negotiate some greater flexibility in her personal schedule, such that I could spend a little more time with her without having to become her “dollie.”
I don’t think I’ll ever truly recover from the trauma of Olivia, Zorah, and my last night at the old firm. Yvonne wants me to see a therapist, but how can I explain what happened to a stranger? Spending time with Yvonne is therapeutic enough.
Of course, I suspect the real reason Yvonne wants me to “get over it” is so she can feel better about asking permission to shrink me. I keep demurring to draw this out as long as possible, but the brutal fact is that she doesn’t need my permission. All she has to do is say the word. You better believe I made multiple backups of the audio recording she made for me on our last day at the old firm.
Our flirtation has continued and expanded, of course, since we got our new jobs. She keeps saying she wants to get her hands on my full-size cock, but we’ve never managed to make it happen. I’m nervously anticipating next month, however, when Jeff and his daughter will be back east for a week visiting his family. Yvonne’s old friend Shelly is coming up to stay with her at the same time.
Allegedly, Shelly is very interested in making my acquaintance—she’s heard all about me.