Mom and Rosie came running into the room.

               “What!? What is it?!” Mom yelled

               “Look!” – Megan said as she pointed at me. The simple act of her pointing her finger towards me caused me to fall flat on my ass in shock. How could something that big move so quickly? It was like everyone else was still in regular speed, but I was just tiny.

               “Oh. My. Goodness. Is that….Is that Paul? Is that my baby boy? WHAT HAPPENED?!” Mom said as she grew increasingly worried and unstable.

               “We have no idea” Ashley answered, “We just woke up and saw him lying there sleeping. Like that. All tiny. He can’t be more than an inch tall.”

               “Well, things like this don’t just happen! Somebody poisoned my baby! I’m going to call the police right now!” Mom started panicking really bad now.

               I tried yelling out to them but they clearly couldn’t hear me.

               “Mom, calm down.” Sarah said in a soft tone, to try and get her to relax. “I’m sure he’s fine. He’s just tiny. I really don’t think anyone poisoned him.” – Sarah

               I don’t get it. Why wasn’t anyone telling her about Rosie’s magic. Rosie was remaining quiet. The look on her face genuinely scared me. It looked like she was plotting something. A very faint grin was formed right across her face.

               “Ok. Ok. You’re right. But we have to do something about this. The nearest hospital is over an hour away, and the doctor is out until next Monday. If he have no choice but to wait, all we can do is hope that maybe he’ll get back to normal in the meantime.” Mom said as she finally calmed down.

               On the other hand, I was not calm at all. WHY HAS NOBODY TOLD HER ABOUT THE MAGIC. Then again, I guess she wouldn’t believe that kind of nonsense. But still! This was Rosie’s fault. She should get in trouble for it. I began jumping up and down to try and get someone’s attention. They clearly couldn’t hear me at all. Sarah noticed and reached her hand over to pick me up. Her fingers were very soft, but it still felt extremely weird to be picked up like that. She carefully rested me on her palm and brought me to her ear.

               “TELL MOM ABOUT THE MAGIC!” I yelled into her ear.

               “Oh Mom, Paul says he’ll be just fine. Not to worry about him, and that we can wait for the doctor.” Sarah lied right to Mom’s face, right in front of me. Why would she do that?

               Mom was clearly still frazzled. She seemed uneasy, like she really just couldn’t believe it.

               “I need to get out of here, please guys, take care of Paul for a bit while a calm down.” She said, exhaling as she walked out of the room.

               Now it was just me, and the 5 of them in the room.

               “Well, congratulations Rosie, your little spell worked” Sarah mentioned, almost completely uncaringly.

               “I told you guys it would!” Rosie yelled triumphantly.

               It seemed like Megan was the only one here with a level head, as she was the only one who looked worried and slightly angry at everyone else’s complete disregard for the fact that this is a serious problem that needs to be fixed. Megan stormed right over to Rosie and got in her face.

               “Listen here you little shit. I don’t know how the fuck your little magic stuff works, but you need to figure out how to turn him back to normal immediately. I don’t care how you do it. I have to leave for work now, and when I get back tonight, you’d better have an answer.” Megan told her very sternly. She then looked at me, “Sorry that this happened Paul, I hope Rosie gets her shit together and fixes it.” She then looked over at Ashley, Julie, and Sarah. “You guys need to take care of Paul. Keep him away from Rosie until she comes up with a way to fix this.”

               Megan seemed to already have her stuff ready to go, and pulled out her purse from under the bed, along with those horrid black flats, which she stuffed her feet into.

               “I have a 12 hour shift today guys, I’ll see you tonight.” – Megan

               She then hurried out the door.

               Rosie, completely red-faced and infuriated also quickly left the room.

               “Well…what do we do now?” Ashley asked.

               “Let’s ask Paul” Sarah said, still holding me in her palm. She brought me to her ear again.

               “I want to go to my room. I need to think for a while. Just leave me on my bed.” I said into her ear.

               “He says he want to go to his room. I guess we’ll just leave him in there for a bit.” Sarah complied.

               I sat in her palm as she walked to my room. To be honest, the breeze felt nice, and her face truly was beautiful. She just had this plain expression all the time. One would think she was a robot. She didn’t care about a lot of things, and kind of just existed…I always wondered what her deal was.

               “There. Now try not to fall off. I’ll come back in a bit. Until then, entertain yourself somehow.” Sarah said, still with those piercing uncaring eyes, as she dropped me on the bed. I landed with a bounce, and freaked out a little bit still not used to my new size. She proceeded to walk out of the room, and close the door behind her. I sat there, wondering what to do now. Why hadn’t they told mom about Rosie’s magic. Could they just have decided it would be pointless? Or did they not want to freak her out any more than she already was? I have no idea. I decided to just…go to sleep.

               I woke up after what felt like several hours, only to be disappointed by the fact that my shrinking was, in fact, not a dream. I was extremely hungry, and in desperate need of doing something. Anything, I was so bored. But I was stuck on this bed, how the hell was I supposed to get down? I looked over the edge, wondering if I could maybe use the blanket as a rope until I got far enough down. Damnit! Where’s Sarah?! She was supposed to be here…

               I decided to go for it, I didn’t want to wait here all day, so I got a pretty firm grip on the blanket and began making my way down. The floor seemed like it was a mile away. I shimmied my way down, admiring how interesting this new world looked. Being shrunken really gave me an appreciation for how intricate the everyday details of life are. I was only about an 1/8 of the way down when I realized how exhausting this was. My muscles felt like they were going to give out. I was actually frightened, I didn’t think there was any way I was going to make it down, and I was too tired to climb back up. I kind of just held on there for a bit. Suddenly, my door swung open.

               “Paul, where are you?” Sarah asked out loud.

               I tried to yell loud enough for her to here. They weren’t really words, just a series of mangled sounds that I belted out from my diaphragm, which was apparently loud enough for her to hear.

               “What do you think you’re doing? Did you really think you were going to be able to make it all the way down? Come on now, use your head. Did the shrinking make you stupid?” Sarah said as she extended her hand under me.

               I dropped down safely in to her palm again.

               “Come on, Ashley, Julie, and I are watching Jeopardy. We’ve got some pizza too. I bet you’re hungry” – Sarah

               I can’t believe it…Sarah was actually being nice? She usually just ignores me. She usually just ignores everyone, though I think she has a soft spot for Rosie. That’s about all the emotion I can manage out of her.

               She carried me over to the couch in the living room, where Ashley and Julie were already sitting down. She proceeded to sit down on the last remaining cushion of the couch, and began to lower me onto the floor. I wasn’t sure what to do. There’s no way in hell I wanted to be dropped on the floor. Suddenly she stopped—

               “Oh wait, I can’t just drop you on the floor, here you go” Sarah said as she put one of the square couch cushions on the ground. She plopped me right on top of it.

               To be honest, it really did help. All three of them had their feet on the ground, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near that, not that the couch cushion was the perfect spot, it was just better than the floor. So I just sat there, bored, watching jeopardy with them. I smelled something familiar. I looked behind me to notice that all of their feet were still there, resting, giving off their disgusting presence. That sickly odor that didn’t seem to go away. It was thick in its essence, and kind of cheesy. 6 pairs of feet were waiting behind me, like watch dogs, making sure that I didn’t move an inch. My heart started beating faster. I tried to distract myself with something, or find a way out of this situation.  Then the hunger hit me big time. I forgot all about the pizza.

               I got up, and began jumping up and down, waving, and yelling. I wasn’t sure they could understand me, but they sure as hell could hear me. They looked down at me…

               “What does he want?” Ashley asked, genuinely curious.

               “Not sure, but I don’t feel like caring, I really enjoy my jeopardy, I’m doing really good so far, I’ve got almost all the questions right.” Sarah said.

               This pissed me off. She promised me pizza, and here she was ignoring me. We were only 5 minutes into jeopardy, meaning there was still 55 minutes left. I wasn’t going to wait down here stuck in the slight presence of foot odor, for about an hour, waiting for my pizza. I just yelled louder, jumped up and down some more.

               “Looks like he’s getting impatient” Julie said.

               “Uggh..Stop being annoying” Sarah said, clearly bothered by my actions.

               No way, I just kept up my antics, I wasn’t giving up until I got my pizza, and a one way ticket out of here.

               “Damnit! Shutup! I can’t focus with your little squealing!” Sarah finally yelled.

               She lifted her foot slightly and tipped the pillow I was standing on towards here. I lost my balance and rolled down the pillow. It was a smooth transition onto the carpeted floor, but I continued rolling for a few more feet. Gravity feels a lot more in effect when you’re used to being normal height, and then shrunk down to 1 inch. I stopped rolling on my back, and laid there for a second to regain my senses. Upon opening my eyes, I saw something that might as well have caused me to want to commit suicide right then and there. Sarah’s giant, wet, socked foot, hovering several feet above my body.

               I stared in complete awe for a moment. I could see every little detail. How the sock clung tightly to her foot. It outlined it completely, perfectly shaping her toes and toe crevices, cascading down her sole and down her arch, finally coming up at the heel. The sock was grey, and it looked rather moist, which I can only guess was from foot sweat. Seeing my greatest fear like this, tiny and vulnerable was bad enough, but the worst thing my mind couldn’t handle, was the smell. It hit me like a ton of bricks. It definitely smelled of rotten something. Maybe garbage, I wasn’t sure. It also smelled sweaty. I’m not sure how to describe it, but it was clearly the smell of sweaty foot. And it was strong. I felt like a deer in headlights. I didn’t know what to do or how to react.

               Within a few seconds, which felt like hours to me, my body reacted and I immediately started getting up to run away. Instantly, almost like lightning, Sarah began to bring her foot down on me. To her it was a completely causal movement, but to me, it was like an F-22 Jet fighter breaking the sound barrier. She brought her heel down a ways beneath my feet, and “slowly” brought the rest of her foot down, with the ball of her foot aligning perfectly with my body. From my perspective, it looked like I was about to be buried alive, although I think I’d rather be buried alive than be forced to endure what was about to come.

               Her foot finally made contact with me, and compressed me down into the ground, and into the bottom of her foot. All she was doing was resting her foot, but the pressure felt immense. It didn’t feel like pain or anything of the sort, it was just like being wrapped really tightly in a giant wet mop. A really giant, wet, stinky, mop. I could barely breathe, and every breath was full of thick foot stink. I tried flailing my arms and body, but all I accomplished was popping my head up into the crevice beneath her toes. All of the loose sweaty sock here only served to wrap around my head and consume me in stench. The thing is, at normal height, her foot probably would only hold a very faint odor, even if a person were to stick their nose right in between her toes and take a big whiff. But at my size, the scent was magnified at least 10x. Thank god they only smell this bad, which was already ungodly.

               It’s only been about 30 seconds, but I was now extremely tired, and being forced to take deep breaths while trapped under your sister’s sweaty sock is as much of a nightmare as it sounds. I began crying. I felt so helpless. It took her 0 effort to pin me under here. This was quite literally the worst thing that could happen to me ever. My greatest fear, manifested into reality. I could hear jeopardy play in the background, while she just sat there, as if she didn’t just drop her smelly foot on me. At first I thought it must be some kind of joke, she’ll let me up soon, but after a few minutes, I got really scared again. Why hasn’t she moved yet? How long is she going to let her foot rest on top of me? Does she not understand how disgusting this is?

Narrator takes over

Meanwhile, up on the outside world, Ashley and Julie were in slight shock.

               “GROSS! That’s disgusting Sarah. Are you just gonna keep your foot on him like that?” Julie said surprised.

               “Yeah Sarah, that’s gotta be rank. He’s so tiny, you can’t just drop your whole nasty foot on him.” Ashley added.

               “He was bothering me. I just want to finish the show. He can handle a little foot stink for the next 45 minutes.” Sarah said, uncaringly, as she scrunched her toes a little bit, causing some foot sweat to be excreted from her sock and onto Paul, who was still struggling.

               “I’d really hate to be him” Ashley commented, finishing the conversation, with Sarah still uncaring, and Julie and Ashely with somewhat disgusted looks on their faces.

Back to Paul

               It’s been about 30 minutes now. It’s gotten really hot, and even smellier than before. I can’t take this anymore! Knowing that she’s just nonchalantly watching tv, with her foot resting on me. Does she even remember I’m here? Are Julie and Ashley just not paying attention, do they not care either? What happened to my caring sisters? Why aren’t they helping me? I bet Sarah wouldn’t let them help me even if they tried. God it REEKS. The reality of the situation seeped in, and my phobia just came in for another round with my psyche. I burst into tears again, I couldn’t handle this. It was too much. But nothing in this situation was bad enough to make me pass out. I just wanted to disappear at this point. I didn’t care where. I just wanted out of this smelly hell.

               After 15 more minutes of this, I finally heard the ending song. Finally, it’s over! I felt the giant moist weight lift off of me, introducing a new appreciation for fresh air that I never thought I would experience. It washed over me like a beautifully cool breeze, cleansing my soul. I took deep breaths, which was still stained with the stench of Sarah’s foot, but at least it wasn’t as bad. As I looked up, Ashely and Julie had already left, and Sarah was barely looking down at me.

               “Try not to bother me next time, twerp. By the way, all the Pizza’s gone. But I guess you were too busy stuck under someone’s foot. Sucks for you” Sarah said as she just got up and walked away.

               I curled up into a ball and just laid there for a bit, soaked in her foot sweat and drenched in the odor. I just wanted to die. I somehow managed to sob myself to sleep.

               The next thing I heard jolted me out of my depression induced slumber.

               “Oh my god! Paul! What happened to you!?” – It was Megan’s voice.