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Philip was probably the most liked, noticeable, and friendly server at Shake and Swingers, the pub-lounge that he and his best friend Paige worked at.  The two had a strong past, having dated before, been involved in poly-amorous relationships together, and messed around a lot.  But now they were simply friends that worked together.  Both were seemingly happy about this arrangement, and felt no need to ever slip into the dry-storage closet for ‘tip-sharing’ as the other servers jokingly called it.

He made good money and Shake and Swingers, enough to pay his bills, eat and get gas, and even some extra for his more expensive hobbies.  He looked forward to the day he could step up and become a manager, but everyone knew that Paige was way ahead in the promotion race.

Today, a quiet Tuesday night, meant that Paige and Philip were alone on the floor.  A few of the other servers had gotten off early and were still at the bar drinking, the manager had disappeared into the office, and the sole bartender was juicing fruits between drinks.  Phil had no tables, and Paige had two, one preparing to leave, the other was halfway through their meal. It meant that the ex-lovers were standing in the backroom doing their side-work.
                “Cosplay Night is Saturday, got your costume ready?”  Philip asked, arms folded as he rested against the prep table that Paige was assembling silverware rolls on.
                “Uh…no.  I have a few ideas, but all of them are pretty revealing.” Paige replied, as she reached for another fork to begin another silverware roll.

                “Not scared of a little nip-slip are you?”  Phil snickered, moving his hands up as if to hide his chest.

                “As packed as this place will be with a bunch of drunk nerds?  Yeah, totally!” 
                “Oh, those guys are playful at worst. No one is gonna try to take your bikini top off.”

                “Sadly, it’s not the customers that I’m worried about…it’s everybody here.”  Paige laughed a little.

                “I think you’re overreacting…” Philip sighed, reaching for his glass of water on the table.  “At least you get to wear a bikini, it is way too hot out there, and it’ll be worse Saturday.”

                “Yeah.  Still an occupational hazard.” She groaned, looking at all of the silverware left to roll.  “I better check on my tables.”  

                “Mm-kay.”  Philip replied, taking a sip of water and setting it down.  His head had been swimming most of the day.  As Paige walked past him, he watched her.  She was only 5’6”, but all 65 inches of that woman were absolutely perfect.  She was slim, with perky and appropriately sized breasts, long, sculpted legs, and an olive-toned complexion.  Big brown eyes, perfect white teeth.  Her hair, though normally a dark brunette, was currently dyed a dark purple.  She wore a black tank top, tight black leggings, and a pair of colorful ankle socks, just barely visible at the cuff of her generic, solid black canvas shoes.

Seeing her walk away, hips swaying naturally, Phil was lost in the moment. Everything about her was perfect, and it was times like these that he wondered if he should reconsider their relationship.

                No. Paige was not a bird to be locked in a cage by one man, she was a gypsy of modern, urban society.  She was happier when she was not tied down, and if she was happy, well…so was he.

Maybe.

Philip turned around, pressing both of his palms to the prep table to fight off the dizzy spell he was having.  It was one of many he’d had at work that day, and they didn’t seem to be getting better. His head pounded.  He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head from side to side.  Seconds later, his knees became weak. He reopened his eyes, to find that his vision was blurred. 

                “Paige…?”  He spoke softly, more a call for help than he intended, before he collapsed on the floor unconscious.

                He’d always consider himself to be healthy and fit, rarely getting sick and able to fight off a cold within a day or so.  This was a strange new sensation, uncomfortable and surreal.  He could barely move when he regained conscious, assumingly only seconds later.  He was still alone, or at least Paige was nowhere to be seen. 
                “Ouch…”  His head throbbed…this time from the blunt force trauma of slamming his head into the tile of the prep room floor. Slowly pulling himself up to his knees, he reached out and checked his head for a wound…no blood, but what would certainly be a lump later.  As he sat up on his knees, he immediately recognized through blurred vision that he was not in the prep room anymore.  This didn’t even seem like the same planet anymore, much less Shake and Swingers. 
                Fighting off his other symptoms to focus on the more pressing problem, Phil quickly stood and looked around.  “Hello?  Paige?  Anybody?”  He called out, hearing the echo return to him after a moment.  The ground was dark grey, the same color as the prep room floor. Above?  A silver roof, easily half a mile into the sky.  As he turned around, he saw that he was in the shadow of an enormous, round structure, it was the size of a huge tower.  As he followed it up, he realized that it was attached to the roof, apparently supporting it. It was the only thing he could make any sense of, the area he was in seemed to go on for miles and miles.

So Philip began to walk.  It seemed as though wherever he was had been abandoned long ago, and was littered with strange rocks and boulders in random sizes, some twice as tall as he was, others only as tall as his knees. 

                “Is anyone out there?”  He would occasionally call into the distance, receiving no response or indication that he wasn’t alone.  It seemed like he was going to reach the strange structure in a few minutes.  He’d already been walking for about ten.  As he made plans for what he would do upon arrival, he heard a soft thud in the distance.  He paused mid-step to determine the source.

Thud.

Another Sound.  Phil began to worry.

Thud. Thoom.  Thud. The sounds began to get more rhythmic, and as they did, the lost server was able to find the direction of the sounds…but he was not happy about what he saw.

                If he had not been so far away, he wouldn’t have been able to see that the incredible, titan of a woman walking into his view was Paige.  Due to the roof he was under, that was clearly not the highest point around, he could only see as high as her ankles. His eyes widened, his pulse quickened.  Paige was easily the most enormous single thing he had ever seen. As though to encourage his temporary shock and near-worship, Paige paused as she fully entered the room, her powerful feet sliding together while she paused to look around.

                “Must’ve gone to the bathroom…” She mused, before moving to continue her graceful walk back to where she had been standing. Her sneakers covered more miles in a single step than Philip could have walked in a day, it seemed.  Philip was tiny, absolutely miniscule, and standing under the prep table.

Her next step was the most attention-grabbing of any yet, in large part due to him being able to watch it, but additionally because he saw the debris on the ground being blown asunder as the flat soles of her shoes created a draft underneath them as she swung her foot forward.  It was not, from this distance, to even ruffle Philip’s hair, but within a few steps…it would be catastrophic. 

                He had to do something.  Obviously, getting her attention was priority, but not if he couldn’t even withstand a blast of wind from being near her footsteps.  Fortunately, between Paige and her shrunken co-worker was the leg of the prep-table…the structure he had originally he’d been trying to reach.  The shrunken boy began a mad sprint for his destination. 

                Paige, however, would only need two or three more steps to reach the same place.  Another step, this one tossed his hair about in the displaced air currents. He wasn’t going to make it!  But then he had a thought.  He didn’t have to get to the table leg, he just had to use it to protect him from her footsteps, and ultimately being stepped on.  He changed direction, running a few steps to the side so that as Paige took her next step, the table leg blocked the wind for him, and Philip went unmolested from her footsteps’ wrath. 

He continued to watch while he ran, unsure where Paige was ultimately going to stop.  The echoing of her shoes on the tile hurt his ears, but he was able to see that her right foot landed next to the other side of the prep table leg.  It then pivoted on toes as she swung her body to face the table.  Her left foot should be landing closer to him than he would like, but from this vantage point, he could not even make out the distance from her heel to toe, he would be smaller than the treads of the shoe, if he was under it. 

The sky flashed dark more quickly than he could look up to see.  The moment of truth.  He was still running the remaining distance towards the table leg, but her last step would be landing behind him, and he was unprotected from the blast of displaced area.  He braced for impact.

Thoom!

              Paige’s shoe crashed to the floor behind him, as expected, putting Philip between the feet of the giantess, along with the table leg.  Unprepared for the displaced air being more powerful by proximity than ever, Philip was carried off by it, several feet forward.  He screamed helplessly, before landing roughly on the ground a few relative yards from his original destination.  He rolled along the floor as the momentum dispersed, and ended up flat on his face.

                Reopening his eyes, he turned to look at the source of his trouble.

                The mountainous wall of black rubber and canvas before him filled his vision.  In reality, her foot was only a few inches away from Phil, but her shoe was easily large enough to cover that distance in the shifting of an ankle.  It was easily a two or three minute walk from the enormous heel to the toe.  Vertically, Paige’s exposed ankle served as a testament to the magnitude of the woman herself.  Climbing up to it would not be unlike trying to climb any mountain of modest altitude, and Philip wouldn’t have any of the necessary preparations.  Down below, the slightest bit of color (maybe 150 feet of fabric, to the shrunken waiter) was exposed to the light, a white and pink striped sock, with blue smiley faces adorning it.  It was cute, but if each of those smile had an actual mouth, then Philip hardly be a mouthful.  He couldn’t begin to imagine the size of Paige’s actual mouth.

             Closer to Paige’s toes, the shoe had two open eyelets, merely for design and airflow purposes, placed in the canvas just above the rubber sole.  They could serve as places to climb higher, towards the shoe strings which were tied just a few hundred yards above. 

             Then Philip came out of his thought process.  Was he considering climbing this thing?  This was Paige’s shoe, not only was that incredibly dangerous, but entirely unrealistic.  What would be the goal?  How would that get him help?  Would he just keep climbing to eventually reach her ears or eyes?  Reaching her ankle would be an hour long climb, easily.  But to reach her face?  Days.  Maybe even weeks.  Philip sighed and stepped back to lean against the table leg.  As he prepared to close his eyes, something caught his attention.
   
              It was big…well, big compared to him, maybe the size of a small house.  It was a monster, with a huge head and crawled on six legs.  Two massive, torso-sized mandibles threatened to rip him in half.  A dark-red body that was obviously a symbol for the blood it was going to spill stood 10 feet taller than Phil’s head.  It was…an ant.

              It was also not paying attention to Philip.  It was primarily scavenging about halfway the distance between Paige’s shoe and the tiny waiter.  But Phil froze in place anyway.  He wasn’t sure what Paige was doing…likely attending to the silverware again, but he was sure Paige wasn’t coming to his aide, and he didn’t want to have choose between running from the ant and staying near Paige.  So…he watched, quietly.

                The ant continued about it’s business, checking food, following an invisible trail, until it had the same moment Phil had been experiencing before the ant’s arrival.  It noticed the massiveness of Paige’s shoe, and only became more curious.  It quickly headed in the direction of Paige’s shoe, and Phil continued to watch.

                Paige's shoe made what might have unnoticeably small movements every few seconds as her toes wiggled, or her weight shifted to support a movement her upper body made.  Phil wondered what the ant might want, other than food that was so close to Paige’s shoe.  Moments later, the ant arrived within touching distance of the rubber canvas wall, paused momentarily, and began to climb it.  Phil’s eyes widened. 

His new temporary source of entertainment began to crawl along the side of Paige’s shoe, easily moving along the rubber sole until it made it’s way onto the canvas.  It effortlessly continued it’s path, moving along until it reached the top of the mountain within two minutes or less of arriving at the shoe.  It navigated the terrain of the shoe, arriving at the laces, a crisscrossing pattern-like maze.  Under, over, between…it was all such a breeze, the ant was adapted to the terrain, and Phil watched in admiration.  As it neared the toe of the shoe, it turned right, and began to descend. 

                Phil was concerned that the ant had gotten bored and decided to move on, but instead, watched as the ant moved closer to the ground, and paused at the eyelets.  The eyelets were twice as big as the ant, and the ant seemed to be considering them for a moment, before moving on quickly, and climbing inside the eyelet, disappearing into the dark, foot-filled world of Paige’s shoe.

Phil nearly chuckled in amusement.  Surely going inside Paige’s shoe was a death sentence. A tap of the foot, a toe wiggle, god forbid a full step, and the ant would be crushed.  Shaking his head some, Philip stood and prepared to pace back and forth, intending to try to figure out how to get out of his own situation.  As he turned, he was greeted by a pair huge, hard mandibles. 

                The ant brought a friend.

Philip screamed, eyes shut tight as he ran in any other direction, but the ant was easily a step behind.  It seemed to be taunting him, only moving forward once Philip was more than a few steps out of it’s reach.  This was it, he was going to be killed by this massive ant while his best friend stood there, literally inches away.  The first man ever to be killed by a single ant, at least he thought.

                Already exhausted and still plagued by his dizziness from earlier, Phil lost momentum quickly and turned around to see that the ant was stopped, no longer actively chasing, but still watching intently.  He slowed down, but kept the jog up, and didn’t stop until he felt a powerful wind, almost enough to take him off his feet, come from behind. 
               
             “Ow.  Dammit.” The sound of a goddess from above, high above.  Paige had spoken. The ant in front of him turned and began to run more quickly than ever, and Philip noticed a shadow above him. 

                Above him, the black, soiled treads of Paige’s shoe dwarfed the sky he had become used to.  In front of him, he could see that far, far ahead, the toe of Paige’s shoe was on the ground, and off to the side…an escapee ant was crawling out of an eyelet, and running in the opposite direction.  Paige was shifting her foot in response to what had to have been an ant bite.

                The sky darkened, and his attention shifted up again, Paige’s foot was descending.  Phil ran. 

                “Paige, no!  Don’t crush me!  Help!”  He screamed out to his clueless best friend, as she shifted her weight from her toes, moving to stand flat on both feet again.  The world darkened even more. He closed his eyes, and heard an ear-shattering scream, as Paige’s momentum shifted from a descending motion to a sliding one.  The ball of her foot shifted back violently, leaving her toes on the ground, and Phil was only given a glance as the sole of the shoe steam-rolled him, and he could no longer feel or see.

 

 

                “Phil?  Philip!”  Paige’s angelic voice filled his ears.  She must have been his personal angel in heaven. Light flooded his vision again.  He opened his eyes, to see the floor of the prep room again, and a few inches from his nose, a tiny ant, scrambling around on the floor.   Before he was able to breathe in a sigh of relief, a shadow formed around the ant, and a black canvas tennis shoe crashed into the ground in front of his face.  The ant disappeared under it, and he was staring at the two eyelets of Paige’s shoe.  He gasped, sitting up quickly. 
                “Agghh!  What the…!”He managed to get out, before Paige immediately dropped to her knees in front of him. 

                “Phil, are you okay?  Why are you on the ground?” Her brown eyes, filled with worry.

                “I…I um…I don’t know…I just…”

                “Did you faint?”

                “…I don’t know, maybe…I just…”  Philip placed his hand on his head.  The lump was still there.  “…I don’t feel very good…maybe I should see a doctor.” 

                “Yeah…let’s get you some help.”  Paige reached over, taking his arm onto her shoulder, and helped him stand.  Philip looked back at the floor for a moment as they headed for the door.  He cringed and turned his head, continuing to walk with Paige’s help.

 

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