Ned wasn't sure how long he sat in the darkness of Brittany's shoebox before he finally pushed himself to his feet. He took a long deep breath in an attempt to steady himself, instantly making him question whether or not any air would get into the tiny box. His heartbeat ticked up rapidly as panic overtook him, and the tiny man flailed his arms upward. When he felt them skim the cardboard lid above, he jumped with all of his might.

His open palms slapped loudly against the lid but did nothing to dislodge it. Ned tried again and again but there was no way for him to apply any force to the expansive lid. After his sixth or seventh attempt, he dropped back down onto his knees and the cardboard floor of his prison didn't give in at all to his pathetic weight.

Tears began to flow freely down his cheeks as he realized that he was trapped by some enormous high schooler in a shoebox. His wails bounced off the walls and echoed through the darkness, surrounding Ned with his own misery as he beat his fists against the floor and let all of his rage out.

Months of twenty-two year old receptionists and assistants laughing at his dwindling height, being almost run over by coworkers who didn't realize he was fixing the computers beneath their desks, and being spoken down to by his own wife. Through all of that he had kept his chin up, and he had been able to tell himself that it was all ok. His life was finally returning to a routine, something he knew. He worked from home, he walked the dog, and as his responsibilities at work dwindled faster than his height, he would busy himself with projects at home.

Being less than two feet tall would finally give Ned the free time to tackle some projects he and Joanne had been putting off for years. He would fix up some of the molding, do some touch ups on the walls, and maybe even get back into the kind of coding he had done before Jeremy had been born. Ned had tons of app ideas that he had never had the time to bother with but now he would, he finally would.

Instead, he had been kidnapped by some giant brat.

The world around him suddenly rumbled, and Ned froze. He could hear her distant footsteps as she walked around the room, each one making his makeshift prison shudder with greater intensity as she inched ever closer to him. Unconsciously, Ned could feel his neck craning back as he looked through the pitch black to the ceiling, expecting it to be replaced with blinding light any second.

There was a loud, almost metallic, rumble outside the shoebox.

With a grimace, Ned realized she had placed him in her closet, the no doubt massive space separated from her room by a sliding door. He could hear the sound of a light clicking on somewhere high above, before the relative silence was broken by a loud and unladylike burp. The tiny man shuddered as he listened to Brittany pat her large flat stomach and snicker quietly to herself.

He continued to wait with bated breath while she did something in the closet. Distorted by size and muffled by the apparently oversized shoebox he was trapped in, Ned couldn't make any sense of the sounds. She mumbled to herself, the words indistinct but instantly familiar to the long married tiny man she had imprisoned. The gigantic blonde was mulling over outfits for tomorrow, as if Ned wasn't even trapped in her immense closet.

Blood boiling, the tiny man screamed, any concerns over his possibly dwindling air supply forgotten as he stood and punched up at the immovable lid. He heard Brittany pull a few things off a rack high above, humming and debating how things looked with herself before the door finally rumbled shut, leaving Ned panting and sobbing in the shoebox. The tiny man felt her walk away, her footsteps shaking his world enough to knock the distraught man to the floor.

Vibrant pop music filled the room as he listened to her chair groan beneath her, the giant girl no doubt finally settling down to do her homework after an afternoon spent watching Ned struggle to clean her sneakers. He languished at the bottom of the shoebox as song after song played, Brittany occasionally rising to her feet and causing the floor to quake as she paced or went about her enormous life. Her playlist was a never ending parade of twenty-something artists trying to escape their Disneyified roots, and top forty artists whose names Ned had never bothered to learn. By the time he began to wish she would at least play something he recognized, the tiny man could feel his stomach rumbling in hunger.

Whimpering and rolling about on the ground, Ned wondered if this would be the rest of his life.

If his wife and son hadn't come knocking on the door yet, he doubted that they ever would. Even if they did, he would be trapped inside Brittany's shoebox, far away from where any responsible adult might find him, if they had any reason to expect the gigantic friendly cheerleader. Having seen them at jumbotron proportions, Ned couldn't forget the blonde's classic good looks, and had no doubt no one would ever suspect she was lying about keeping him, or that she was even capable of it in the first place.

He listened as the giant girl walked by and out of her room once again, then released a long sigh. She could easily get away with doing whatever she wanted to him, and at his size, there was nothing Ned could possibly do to oppose her. His heart ached as he realized that if she had found him at his previous formidable twenty-one inches, Ned would have had to rely heavily on the family corgi to protect himself than anything he could have done. The cheerleader could have scooped him up like a disobedient toddler, tossed him over her shoulder and trapped him inside her house without any problems.

Sniffling, Ned wondered if his coworkers had been right to laugh at him the last time he was in the office, scurrying by at less than three feet tall. To most of the recent male hires, all of whom were six foot plus young bucks, he must have looked like a kid playing at being an adult. Any one of them could have simply sat on him and cracked most of the bones in his body with their meaty frames. Sitting in the dark, Ned wondered why the Hell he had let his pride stand in his way for so long? All it had gotten him was trapped in a shoebox.

Brittany returned with another round of earth shattering footfalls but this time, the closet rumbled open too. Before he could prepare himself for it, the lid was yanked up into the sky, and Ned was squirming away in the blinding light of an unshaded forty watt bulb.

A giggle the giant blonde didn't bother to stifle completed his humiliation before she spoke, “I figured you were probably getting pretty hungry in here, little guy.” His vision cleared and he found himself staring up at her hunched over form, her pajama bottoms filled most of the sky as she squatted down over his prison. Without warning, a huge finger came down and rammed hard into his side, “Huh, you getting hungry?”

Ned coughed as it felt like she punched right through his skin and into his stomach, rolling over from the pain. He shut his eyes tight as nausea rolled over him, and the tiny man nodded furiously.

A loud crunch filled his ears, and he felt hard sharp rocks hitting his skin. Opening his eyes, Ned found cookie crumbs literally raining down around him. In the sky above, he watched as Brittany popped the rest of the Oreo into her huge mouth. “Mhm,” she moaned as she licked her lips and lifted another to her mouth. Biting into it, she spoke through her full mouth, crumbs and spit now flying down at him, “You want one?”

“Please!” He cried, unable to scrape any dignity together as he literally begged for a piece of her cookie, his hands clasped together and tears in his eyes, “Please! Please!”

She took another thunderous bite before saying, “You did do a pretty good job with my cheering sneakers, so I guess you can have a little piece.” Snapping a miniscule fragment off in her fingers she lowered it down into the shoebox and set it down next to him. Turning to face it, Ned found himself staring at a piece bigger than his whole head. Before he could reach for it though, her finger slammed into his stomach again, “I can't give you anymore than that. I don't want you getting any fatter, little man.”

Clutching his chest, Ned rolled over onto his side and dropped his free arm across the cookie before dragging it to his dry lips. Nibbling the sugary chocolate confection, the tiny man became lost in its overbearing flavor before he found it being yanked away by a warm pillar of flesh.

“Now what do you say when someone is nice to you?” The blonde asked, clearly reveling in her power and superiority to the tiny man.

Looking up, he wasn't surprised to see her phone hanging over him, and as he whimpered his thanks, Ned could no longer be shocked or scandalized by the loud click of the camera app. The huge finger returned his cookie bit to him while Brittany remained looming over his tiny world, watching him like he were some exotic animal in a cage at the zoo. Again, the tiny man pulled it to his lips, and bit down hard, swallowing the sharply flavored cookie with a grimace.

The sound of a plastic cap being unscrewed got Ned's attention, and he lifted his head in time to watch Brittany seemingly drink gallon after gallon of water from a water tower sized bottle. She let out a low refreshing 'ah' as she finished, her dark brown eyes resting on him before her bright pink lips broke into a smile. “I guess it's true what they say,” she giggled as she carefully poured water into the cap, a few drops raining down and soaking into the cardboard floor, “If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want some milk.” The giant girl kept giggling as she lowered the cap down next to him, water sloshing over the sides before she added, “But you just get water, little guy. Maybe after you've done some more work for me, you'll get to have some milk.”

The giant girl set the water bottle down next to his shoebox prison, the bottle rising above it as she grabbed the nearby lid. “Speaking of work, I do have school tomorrow and then a game at night so I better get to bed. I should be able to feed you again before I go but if I don't,” she shrugged her huge shoulders, “Tough shit, little guy.”

In spite of his stomach lurching in pain, Ned stopped eating, trying to figure out how long he could make the tiny piece of cookie last. Looking back up at Brittany, he wanted to plead with her, beg her to be kind, but before he could muster the energy, she slapped the lid back down and plunged him into darkness. The world rumbled and her loud music played on for what seemed like an eternity before he finally heard her bed springs moan and groan.

The tiny man lay there, grabbing a few of the errant crumbs that had fallen on him when she had first lifted the lid off of his prison, and munched on them while listening to her toss and turn in bed. He realized, sitting there in the dark, that there was no such thing as true silence for him anymore. The sound of the house's enormous central air vents turning on and off kept catching him off guard, as did the enormous life of her parents in the rest of the cavernous home. He could hear and feel them moving about, their voices impossible to understand as they got ready for bed.

At one point, lost in a daze of fatigue that failed to help him sleep, Ned heard one of her parents come in and check on her. The gigantic being no doubt looked down on her and saw a sweet young girl who could do no wrong, completely oblivious to the fact that she had a person imprisoned just a few feet away in her closet. It was as he listened to the girl's giant mother whisper something before shutting the door, that Ned realized that there was a way out for him, all he needed to do was get out of the box.

Reaching out, and feeling the damp cardboard where Brittany had accidentally spilled water, the tiny man hatched a plan. Despite how tired he was, and how weak he felt, Ned dug his fist into the now mushy cardboard and smiled. Rolling over, he finally was able to fall asleep, in spite of the huge roaring noise around him.

Ned's dreamless slumber didn't last long though.

It seemed as soon as he fell asleep, he was awake again feeling the gigantic girl's feet pound the carpeted floor as she got ready for her day. His stomach roared instantly, and Ned found himself staring up at the dark ceiling above him, wondering if he would see Brittany's face before he made his breakout. The world shook, and the door to her closet rumbled open but never shut as she grabbed her clothes for the day and presumably got dressed in a hurry.

A long period of inactivity made Ned think she had left, and he slowly rolled over onto his hands and knees. Before he could creep to the cap full of water though, his world shook again, and Brittany's annoyed voice filled his ears, “Ugh, how could I forget shoes.”

He froze in place as he listened to her shove things about, terrified that she would fling the box he was in across the room without a second thought. Instead, she simply grunted to herself as she dismissed option after option.

“My Stan Smiths would be perfect but they're all scuffed up,” she whined before suddenly letting out a bemused, “Duh.” His entire world shook violently, sending him to the ground. Looking up, Ned fully expected the ceiling to break away before he realized that the quake had been caused by her simply placing a pair of shoes down on his prison. “Little fucker can work on those between school and the game so I have them for afterward,” she mused, as if forcing a grown man to clean a pair of sneakers were an ordinary part of her day. “I guess these will do,” Brittany droned on as she walked away, her words still reaching his ears despite the way her steps made Ned's world shake, “They're pretty cute.”

Ned lay down on the floor of the shoebox for a long time, simply panting and wondering if the teen would return to unconsciously torture him again before she left for school. After what felt like an eternity, the tiny man decided that it was finally safe for him to act.

Grabbing the remainder of his cookie crumbs, Ned ate a quick breakfast, and used the sugar rush to fuel the next step of his plan. Standing, he walked forward with his hands outstretched until he hit a wall, following it along with his left hand, counting his paces as he went. He made a full circuit of the shoebox before finally coming to a stop and letting out a soft sigh, the footstep count for each side of the box comically high at his current height.

He walked back to the cap of water and knelt down, scooping up water in his hands and drinking greedily. The water instantly started to rejuvenate him, washing away the few cobwebs left in his brain, and doing wonders against the near instant crash following his horrendously non-nutritious breakfast. Despite being tepid at best, Ned still found the water refreshing, and when he drank his fill, he started to push the water to the wall, and inevitably to the nearest corner.

Taking great pains not to spill any, the tiny man finally reached a corner and began to tip the cap toward the cardboard. Rather than pour it all out at once, Ned carefully let out a few splashes at a time before letting it set into the cardboard. Feeling it become soft and mushy, he slammed his fists into the walls again and again, trying to force the flimsy paper product apart.

Ned chuckled to himself as he wiped sweat from his brow and started another round of wetting, remembering how many times he had accidentally bent or torn a piece of cardboard in his lifetime. Now, at a little over four inches tall, the tiny man had to jury rig a system to weaken it in a slim hope that he could break out.

It took a full third round of washing and pounding before Ned finally started to see morning light filter into his tiny prison. Screaming in triumph, he threw himself into the cardboard wall and pushed with all of his might before finally popping out the other side.

His body flopped out onto the carpeted floor of Brittany's closet, and Ned sucked in deep gleeful breaths of fresh air. The dim sky above him was filled with shirts, dresses, skirts, and jeans all arranged seemingly without any organization on an endless supply of hooks and hangers. He frowned as he realized that the young girl's wardrobe was easily bigger than his wife's, maybe his and his wife's put together.

Pushing the now glaring reminder of the teenager's comparative wealth from his mind, Ned stood up only to find himself staring into the dusty and scuffed soles of the shoes she planned to have him clean. He frowned as he took in the plain white sneaker, the perforated holes on its side suggesting the Adidas stripes, and the dark green patch of fabric being the only non-white part of the shoe. He remembered people wearing shoes exactly like them when he was in high school, and wondered when the hell they had come back in style.

Turning his back on the shoes, Ned stared out at the open expanse of carpet before him, and without a second thought rushed out. Despite the pain in his back from sleeping on a floor, and the ache in his arms from punching a hole through the shoebox, all of his problems seemed to melt away as he dashed out of Brittany's closet. He practically danced as he came into the bright sunlight of late morning that was shooting out of her window, spinning like he was about to break into song before collapsing onto his knees to catch his breath.

Shutting his eyes and taking a deep breath, Ned tried to steel himself for the possibility that the girl's door was closed before turning to face it. His heart leaped into his throat as he saw himself staring out into a well-lit hallway whose size put most highways to shame. Rather than running out at full speed, Ned approached with a slow confident march, he had hours to find a place to hide before Brittany returned, and then he would just have to wait to be found by her mother or father.

The sound of a giant moving around downstairs instantly drew Ned's attention. Or perhaps not, he thought as his pace quickened, carrying him to the massive hallway. Looking up and down the hall, he could see several doors, almost all of which were slightly ajar, and an open space that he vaguely remembered as being the direction of the stairs. Ned suddenly found indecision gripping him as he debated between the stairs and one of the other rooms on the second floor.

If her parents were anything like him, they would only come upstairs before leaving for work if they had forgotten something. At his size though the thought of getting down a single step was exhausting. The tiny man would either have to jump it and pray he landed without injury, or hang down and drop while praying he landed without injury. Quivering in place, it took Ned several long seconds to realize that he wasn't shaking out of fright and confusion but the approach of a giant.

Turning toward the stairway, he sucked in deep breaths and prepared to get the attention of whoever it was. His heart pounded in his chest as he felt the floor beneath him shake harder and harder. Despite being well aware of their arrival, Ned still found himself jumping back in fright as he watched Brittany's mother turn the corner, her socked feet smashing carpet fibers as she walked while the hem of her designer jeans dragged behind her.

The woman was just as beautiful as her daughter, perhaps even better looking in Ned's opinion as he took in her wider hips, and the heavier breasts straining against a tee shirt that announced her as the proud parent of an NYU student. Her face was sharper than her daughter's, with better defined cheek bones and short blonde hair that neatly framed her more angular jawline. Ned tried to catch her chocolate colored eyes by jumping up and down but she was already moving past him toward her bedroom, her heavy footsteps sending him falling onto the carpet.

Ned scrambled to his feet and gave chase, cursing to himself that he had now twice failed to get a giant person's attention as they passed him by. He followed her into a positively gigantic master bedroom, and found himself slowing down as he tried to process the scale of it. Even in comparison to the gargantuan woman he was trying to speak to, the room was huge.

“Oh no, I don't think so,” the offhand comment sent a shiver down Ned's spine as he searched for its source. He finally spotted her standing next to a bed that could hold several city blocks, scrolling through the phone in her hand. Her thumbs flashed across the screen as she shook her head back and forth, “No, I'm not even full time, Sheila and I worked a double shift yesterday. I am not going into work.” The blonde muttered, “Bitch,” underneath her breath as she nearly slammed the phone down on her bedside table.

Ned trembled, both from her distant powerful footfalls and from the fear gripping his heart, as he watched her walk into an adjoining room. Not wanting her to leave without noticing him, the tiny man jogged after her once more, skidding to a halt in front of a huge entryway he quickly realized lead to a walk in closet. Brittany's wardrobe put Joanne's closet to shame, but her mother's closet put the entire guest room in Ned's house to shame.

The enormous blonde woman muttered as she stared at a literal wall of shoes, the indistinct words a prefect match for the hemming and hawing he heard from Brittany the night before. Her fingers traced over three different pairs of running shoes, then on to several other sets of sneakers and casual footwear before moving on to boots and then back to the shoes she had been originally considering. Ned simply stood there, jaw agape, as he watched the woman fret over how to complete her outfit.

The fresh memory of Brittany agonizing over the same issue and then consigning him to once more spit-shine a pair of white sneakers spurred the tiny man toward her gigantic mother. Despite the tickle forming in the back of his dry throat, Ned hoarsely cried out, “Hey! Hey!” Brittany's mother cocked her head in surprise at his voice, and from below he watched as her brow furrowed in concentration as he shouted again, “Hey! Down here!”

“What in the world?” She whispered to herself as she turned and began to walk forward.

Ned stopped his advance as he watched her socked feet start to bear down on him, the woman's eyes on the distant windows in the master bedroom, as if his feeble voice was coming from outside. “No! No!” He screamed, trying to rush ahead of the woman's pulverizing footsteps. The shrunken man started to think he would outpace her just as her toes smashed hard into his back and sent him tumbling forward while she skidded to a lumbering floor quaking halt.

By the time Ned finally stopped rolling, he found himself staring up into the dark brown eyes of Brittany's clearly confused mother. The giant woman's face became larger and larger as she squatted down over him, her shadow overtaking his tiny form completely. Confusion turned to anger as she realized what he was, “How did you get in my house?”

“I-I-,” all of the fury and gusto seeped out of Ned as he stared into the woman's seething face.

“I've read about you little freaks,” she growled, her fingertip hovering menacingly over his body, “They say tons of you shrunken things are little perverts who try to watch women undress.” There was no way Ned could escape as her finger slammed down hard into his body, forcing the air from his lungs and shooting bile up his throat. “What? Did you think I was coming in here to change? Or are you one of those ones that goes around sniffing women's feet, hm?” Her face scrunched with rage as she flicked him again, and then she sucked in a quick gasp before asking, “Or were you spying on my daughter, you sick sick bastard?!”

Ned coughed and rolled onto his side as the pain washed over him, spit and vomit forcing its way past his lips as he laid on the carpet, whimpering and pleading.

The floor shook beneath him as the woman laid down and lowered her face till it was directly over him. Strong coffee-laced breath slammed into his nostrils while warm spittle pelted his already disgusting skin, “Well, don't you have anything to say for yourself?”

Crying and praying that she believed him, Ned finally spoke up, “I shrunk yesterday and your, your daught-” the word caught in his throat as he watched her humongous face tighten with rage, “Your daughter forced me to clean her shoes and then she stuck me in a shoebox. Please, please, you have to believe me, I just want to go home.”

Her eyes narrowed and Ned knew things were bad as her lips pressed into a thin line.

“How dare you,” she growled as her fingers snatched him up off the ground and she rose to her full height. Nausea overcame the tiny man and he coughed out more barely digested cookie as he dangled high in the air in front of the woman's face. “You sneak into my house, for who knows what, and then you accuse my daughter of kidnapping you.”

Her huge face shook back and forth as she walked back into her bedroom. “I should call the police on you. Tiny little peeping toms like you deserve to be punished. I'm sure you're all just jealous that you're not Immune like the rest of us and I sympathize,” her fingers violently shook his tiny body as she dangled him over a mason jar full of jewelry, “I really do but that doesn't mean you can just sneak into our houses and do whatever you like.”

“Please, please,” he tried to speak but she thundered over him.

“No, don't worry, just because you should be locked up doesn't mean I'm going to call the cops on you,” she rolled her enormous eyes as she dumped the jewelry out of its jar and placed him at the bottom of it. “Lord knows they'd probably just crush you or something equally crass. No, my husband will know how to deal with you.”

Ned stared up at the enormous blonde woman as she gave him a pitying and disgusted look from on high. He cringed beneath her gaze. “He'll know what to do with you,” she snorted with disgust as she watched him cower far below, “Like my daughter would ever touch a filthy little bug like you.”

She tsked one final time before walking back to her closet. Ned trembled as he touched the clear unscalable wall of a jar that was twice his height. He watched as she left, a pair of running shoes that matched the purple on her shirt adorning her feet as she strolled out to enjoy her day off. Sinking down onto his knees, Ned whimpered and tried not to imagine the punishment he would suffer at the hands of Brittany's enormous father.