The little man struggled to maintain his hold. Rachael’s skin was too cool and dry for him to rely on the moisture of an agitated body to keep him in place. He realized this, it was apparent, when the other women saw his little arms reaching over his head to grasp at the slight mounds of milky flesh. Now he looked like some kind of insect drowning in a puddle of water: he did his best when he lay still, with his tiny hips parked upon the pulsing, puckering pink butthole, but he seemed to feel he was about to fall. His flailing legs had nothing to brace themselves again, and his minuscule fingers couldn’t seem to find purchase anywhere in the subtle valley of healthy, smooth skin.
This was amble material for Jenice, zooming in and making commentary like “uh-oh” and “look at him struggle” and “don’t fall down, li’l fucker, it’s not safe for you” for her video. When she looked up to joke with her captain, however, she fell silent. Frances’s brow was growing tense, and she bit her lip while her hand pumped harder within her taut sports leggings. Her eyes were fixated upon the diminutive naked man fighting to stay atop Rachael’s gently shaking hips. If Rachael were paying attention at all, she might have tilted her pelvis to hold him up, or angled them the other way to dump him onto the seat, perhaps to shelter him between her knees, but she wasn’t. All she could focus on was suckling her tyrannical captain’s sugar-coated toes, fishing her tongue between them to cleanse every last streak of liqueur, and managing this amid intermittent sobbing.
The rest of the team watched the shrunken man’s progress, trying desperately to keep from slipping over the edge, clawing at this young woman’s butt to pull himself up and keep nudging into her asshole. He stiffened abruptly, and Jenice made a surprised yelp as she refocused her camera upon him. His feet flexed and curled, his calves bunched, and his tiny little spine arched. The scrabbling of his arms subsided briefly, making attempts to grasp at her smooth features but losing the range of reach, losing the agility of searching. His tiny little head bent back and the smartphone caught his strained expression, a moment of reverie during which the rest of the world (i.e., five gigantic, pretty, abusive women hovering around him in the back of an old school bus) did not exist. His little body rocked, flashing briefly with the odd street light, a shivering little shrimp balanced upon the slim butt of a timid little woman.
“Oh my god, I think he’s doing it,” Jenice said. The tip of her tongue tested the sharpness of her canine as she leaned in, getting the best shot of the tiny man in his throes of ecstasy. He held there, clenched, then collapsed limply in the narrow butt cleavage, his chest panting.
Before Jenice could frame an adequate punchline, Frances snatched the little man in her fist. Her other hand struggled to jerk her leggings and underwear down, exposing her exquisitely manicured pubic region to the smartphone. She snarled as her hand dipped between her firm, tanned thighs, and the tiny man disappeared into her private shadows. He might have been screaming; only one slim, pale arm waved in the air, perhaps in defense, maybe in farewell.
All the women looked up when the engine’s dull roar emitted the dramatic downward elision of its musical notes and the air breaks let out a loud hissing. They lurched gently to the side as the bus turned. Jenice noticed that Rachael was consistently glowing now, with more and more city lights illuminating through the bus windows. “Shit,” she whispered, struggling to close her phone’s video camera, which was locked in processing such a large file. She ordered Dee-Dee and Ariana to get Rachael dressed immediately, told Mona to hold her position. Dee-Dee yanked Rachael into the aisle by her ankles and managed to force her underwear (backward) and shorts up her legs. Ariana sat her on the edge of the seat, stretched the sports bra to slip into place, and her shirt was much easier to manage.
As for Frances, she looked none too happy to bring the little man back out of her crotch. He hadn’t even made contact with her immaculately shaped labia, not even time for a simple grind into her vulva. She raised him to her face, snarling prettily. “Looks like you lost your chance at a moment in heaven, little man.” Frances flipped him into the air. Ariana gasped and reflexively stepped back, alarmed. Through her trauma and rapid intoxication, Rachael hadn’t the wherewithal to look up and see the pale, naked little body flipping end over end through the darkened space, so he only collapsed in her lap, slipping almost bonelessly between her slender thighs. Dreamily she plucked him up, almost not understanding, then cupped him tenderly in both hands.
Frances leaned down to hiss in her ear, “You don’t say a fucking word to anyone. Kicking you off the team will be the least of your worries if you breathe a word of this to anyone. Look at me. …Look at me: I promise you, you will regret it, badly, if you tell anyone about what happened tonight.” She straightened up and adjusted her leggings back into place, then stalked back to her seat to pull her socks back on. “Get rid of this,” she said, handing the empty schnapps bottle to Mona. Mona looked down at it in her hand, blinking.
Dee-Dee and Jenice likewise organized their belongings, but Ariana sat across from Rachael and, after a moment, gently held her knees. “You’re gonna be okay, Rach. Just get a good night’s sleep tonight, if you can. Sleep off this buzz. You shouldn’t get a hangover, I don’t think. Take a long, hot shower if you need to.” She leaned in to tell Rachael to call her if she needed someone to talk to, wanted to explain that something like this has happened to each of them so she’ll understand, but she stopped. Her eyes locked on Rachael’s little hands, shaking, tenderly cupping the tiny little naked man in her curled fingers. Rachael sobbed, dropping little tears upon his body, murmuring how sorry she was, how very sorry she was for everything. And the little man was stroking her thumb, looking back up at her with a face of consummate caring. He hugged her narrow thumb, and his tiny mouth moved but it was impossible to hear anything as the bus turned into a lot and parked and all the women slowly woke up, complaining, bustling with their gear.
Frances’s team filed out after everyone else, in no hurry to disembark. Frances looked straight ahead, strolling toward her glossy, late-model car, the very picture of nonchalance. Dee-Dee was less cool, gawking straight at what Frances had ignored: a dowdy, agitated old woman quibbling with the bus driver, pointing at Frances. The driver, fatigued from such a long and featureless night drive, could barely make heads or tails out of what she was saying, something about her husband, but there were no men on his bus, he would’ve noticed. The tall middle blocker was frozen with terror, and it took Ariana to shove her roughly out of the way and get her moving. Mona only cast a sidelong glance at the woman, maneuvering herself to block the sight of Ariana’s telltale butt, which surely would have been recognizable from the car tailing them for dozens of miles.
It was little Rachael who interrupted the confusing entreaty, holding her cupped hands up to the older woman. “I’m so sorry,” she said, choking through sobbing. “I’m so stupid, so fucking stupid. Please, I’m so sorry. Take care of him.” Surprised, the woman held out her thicker, softer hands, and Rachael carefully deposited the shrunken nude man into her care, then stumbled away as a long, sustained screech rose from the woman’s throat.
“What did you do, what did you do,” she cried, and Rachael would have collapsed if Mona and Ariana hadn’t seized her arms and nearly carried her away.
Jenice slinked up right behind, grinning warmly. “Here, before you get too excited, you’ll want to have a good look at the little guy’s adventures. Check this tomorrow morning.” She slipped a scrap of paper with a shortened URL into the woman’s coat pocket and disappeared into the night, into the milling crowd of women’s college volleyball players placing calls and looking for their rides.