The tiny man scrambled like mad through the open mouth of his jar, even as his hands and knees got tangled in the plush carpet fibers he continued to scramble, but then in the distance he heard his owner's voice echo out like thunder, “Keep the change.”

With those three words, Dave found himself pushing up against the floor and coming to his feet. He stumbled, his muscles protesting after spending a day confined among Sydney's socks and then massaging her immense peds, but he pressed onward. As he got used to the weird sensation of running through the thick carpet fibers, which was something between marching through snow and thick underbrush, the shrunken man began to pick up speed.

Thwack-Boom! Thwack-Boom!

Sydney's steps grew louder, the rise of her foot punctuated by the slide slapping against her heel before her whole foot crashed down again. Dave's breaths came faster, slightly more ragged, but he desperately tried to keep them measured as he ran down the length of the couch. On the far side was a heavy wooden end table that had a skirt that made it look like it was flush with the ground.

The giantess's excited hum filled his ears, and the floor beneath him began to quake.

As Sydney's shadow fell over his world, Dave threw himself down onto his belly and shimmied across the carpet, the fibers surprisingly soft against his bare skin. Pressing down the carpet as best as he could, he yanked himself through the thin gap between the end table's skirt and the floor itself. Once on the other side, the fibers sprang back up and he found himself in nearly complete darkness. Everywhere he turned, the carpet created an almost seamless mouth with the end table, and despite the inherent discomfort of trapping himself inside a place he couldn't see, Dave found his heart rate actually slowing.

Then he heard the loud groan of Sydney settling down on the couch, and his heart beat slightly faster, knowing that this would be the moment she would discover him missing. Instead though, he heard the amplified sound of her opening a pizza box, and licking her lips as the greasy smell filled the room. The television roared to life, but even though he couldn't hear it, months of listening to the girl eat had ingrained the sounds into his head.

While he could dimly hear her feet slide out of her sandals, and then crash down onto the coffee table as she relaxed, all Dave could hear in his own head was the sound of her enormous lips smacking against each other, her teeth grinding up food, and the ever present sound of her gulping down her dinner. Sometimes, as he had watched the girl devour what to him appeared to be mountains of food, he wondered what it sounded like to other people? Did she sound like some kind of monster who didn't understand etiquette to them or was it all completely normal?

Was it only distorted and terrifying to him because every time he had seen her eat, it had been easy to imagine himself speared on the end of her fork or wriggling alongside other toppings on a slice of pizza?

Dave found himself shaking with terror, followed quickly by a rumbling of hunger from his own belly. “Oh God,” he muttered to himself as he became acutely aware of how empty his own stomach was, and then quickly, of how dry his mouth would become in a short span of time. He did his best to keep his breathing slow and steady as he realized that the townhouse was not the wilds of the city for a man his size.

There would not be caches of food or water they couldn't keep him out of.

“Shit,” he smacked his fist against the ground in frustration.

A small voice in the back of his head urged him to scramble forward, and stealthily crawl back to his jar. Sydney clearly hadn't noticed yet, but every passing second brought her closer and closer to remembering that her four inch tall servant might want to not starve that evening. If he went back fast enough, she would never even know that he had made the attempt.

But Dave would know and the thought of crawling back to be the teenager's slave just so he didn't have to be a little hungry or thirsty made his empty stomach twist itself about in disgust. If he needed to get out fast, then he would do his best to get out fast.

Slowly, still on his belly, he spun himself away from where he had slipped under the end table and toward the opposite side from the couch. Carefully, he crawled like a soldier toward the thin slit of light, and then pushed it open to look for his next hiding place.

“Alright, little man,” Sydney's voice echoed in the distant heavens, “Time for some dinn-”

Her voice was cut off by a gasp of shock that was instantly followed by a truly violent earthquake as her feet crashed down. Everything continued to shake as she threw herself back onto the couch and, from what Dave could make out, checked the soles of her feet for stains. He then heard her lift up her slides before they crashed back to the ground, followed by her full weight slamming back to the floor.

“Where are you, you little shit?”

The words sent a chill down Dave's spine as he heard them echo out across the room. He knew she would be upset, but he had expected the teen to sound pouty and annoyed. Instead, he heard a cold barely concealed rage beneath the words that was punctuated by her powerful footfalls as she marched around the room.

Instinctively, the tiny man found himself curling up as the floor entered a period of continuous shaking as she started to shove things about as best as she could. The couch cushions were flipped over, followed by her body crashing against the ground to look beneath it. Behind him, Dave could see the bright white light of her phone scouring the couch's underside. This was followed by her making an entire circuit of the room, and each time she turned up nothing he heard her release an enraged grunt.

“What the fuck?!”

With each word, the giantess's pitch had gone higher and the volume exploded until Dave was literally left deafened. All he could hear was a singular muffled ringing as the floor continued to rumble beneath him as Sydney stomped about.

His own prison had never been shifted in her search, and he could only be thankful for the fact that she didn't realize he had actually been able to hide beneath it. Still, Dave realized the time before she thought to wrench it up was rapidly dwindling, and so he pressed down the carpet fibers blocking his path.

Sydney's feet crashed down directly in front of him, and he bit down hard on his lip to avoid screaming in terror. Atop the black platforms of her sandals, he watched the knuckles of her toes turn white as she curled them in frustration. She thankfully didn't scream this time, but her all-powerful feet remained directly in front of him, barring his passage to what he thought might be a bookshelf or maybe even a china closet on the far wall, a path that offered lots of cover between a club chair and a floor lamp.

Laying on the ground, watching Syndey's toes flex in rage, the sound of her voice slowly distinguished itself from the loud ringing in his ears, “-ise I won't punish you. If, and only if, you come out right now.”

Her right foot rose up and then smashed down against the carpet, sending a gust of air billowing across Dave's body while shaking the ground beneath it. She tapped her foot two more times before it disappeared into the heavens and stomped down in a horrific crash that sent Dave skidding back several feet.

“What the fuck?” This time she didn't scream, but he could hear the bratty frustration he had been expecting earlier. “Why the hell won't you come out here you little shit?”

Dave's heart began to pound as he watched her toes curl in rage once again, and he suddenly wondered if she actually knew where he was. It didn't make any sense, if she knew he was under the end table, she would just lift it up. She doesn't know, Dave told himself and this was quickly followed by the unbidden thought, Vanessa Clearwater is not a Goddess.

Those thoughts gave him the strength to remain where he was.

“You'll starve you know,” Sydney's voice boomed out but her immense peds retreated from his view as she stepped toward the center of the room, “I don't leave crumbs on the ground for you to eat and neither does my Mom. So if you think you can hide out like some kind of little rat, you're wrong.”

Dave didn't dare poke his head out to see where she was, she had to eventually go back to the big gigantic life she had been complaining about. All he had to do was wait.

“And if you think I'll want you back when you're some half-starved tiny piece of shit, you're really wrong,” venom built up in Sydney's voice as she spoke, “If I see you around my house after tonight, I will squish you just like that.”

He felt the distant quake of her foot smashing against the floor, punctuated by her saying, “Splat!”

He could hear her picking up her things, but then he heard the soft sound of her carefully setting something down in the center of the carpet, “You have amnesty for one night, little man. If you're in your jar when my Mom gets home, there's no punishment. If you're in it by the time I go to school tomorrow, then there will only be a little punishment. If I find you after that, it's squishing time.”

Sydney's immense footfalls then grew distant, and within a few seconds he heard her stomping up the stairs.

A giddy laugh began to bubble up inside Dave as he realized that for some reason, Sydney actually thought this would be enough to get him to be her slave again. Shaking his head, Dave gently pulled himself out from beneath the end table, and rather than immediately duck for cover beneath the book case, he instead turned toward the kitchen.

There were few things that Dave knew he could take for granted, but he knew that there was a huge gulf of time between when Sydney ate dinner and her mother actually returned home. Trekking across the vast living room, Dave quickly realized he knew almost nothing of the gigantic townhouse's layout. He knew what Sydney's room looked like but that was because it was one of the few places she let him out of his jar to simply walk around. With her door firmly shut, there had never been any escape or place to hide in the teenager's room.

The kitchen itself was sleek and modernist, with polished tile that was cold beneath the little man's bare feet. Shivering as he passed beneath cabinets he couldn't hope to open, Dave quickly realized that Sydney was right; they didn't leave crumbs. Passing through the kitchen, he spotted the entrance to some kind of sunroom, which might have been a good place to mount an escape from if the sliding glass door to it wasn't firmly shut and well weatherized.

Turning into a room Dave could only describe as a 'front parlor' he found more heavy pieces of furniture he could hide beneath but none of them were close to the front door or a door to the garage that he found. If Sydney or her mother were to open either one, he would have to run across a wide amount of open ground to reach them. Even if the giantesses didn't notice him, the doors would end up shut. And if they did...

Standing near the center of the parlor, the tiny man shuddered at the thought of it.

Suddenly, Dave heard the sound of a car pulling up.

Turning to a gigantic front window, he realized just how dark it had become. Hearing the mechanical sound of a garage door opener, he started jogging toward the door that would lead to the garage, but then he heard the car pull in and garage door going down before he had barely made it a quarter of the way. Stifling a scream, he turned around and bolted for the far side of the room where the shadow of an impressive china cabinet and coat stand met beside a standing piano.

The door to the garage opened up, bringing with it a cold wind followed by the regal form of Sydney's mother. Dave's breathing came fast as he loped through the shadow and dove beneath the piano, skidding across the floor until he came to a stop.

From the floor, he watched as the older woman stepped into the room. Like every time he had seen her she was dressed in upscale business attire, not too nice to be called formal but several cuts above the cheap suits and dresses that had been common at Dave's old job. The tiny man's heart skipped a beat for a moment as he tried to remember what it was like to wear clothing and found it difficult.

Click-boom!

She always seemed to be wearing heels, even the few glimpses of her he had gotten on the weekends, she wore heels. Now, in the middle of the work week, she was wearing a pair of black leather boots with stiletto heels and a severely pointed toe. Her footsteps filled the room with sound as she crossed to the coat stand and shrugged out of her light jacket, her heavy statement necklace jingling as she did. Poking his head out from beneath the piano, Dave watched as her steely eyes scanned the floor.

“Hmph,” was all she said as she walked off into the kitchen.

The tiny man could do nothing but remain frozen in place as he heard the soft pop of a wine cork followed by the tinkling sound of wine being poured. Then came more distant footsteps and another annoyed noise. Lights were extinguished across the first floor, and then Dave turned to watch Sydney's mother enter from the living room where his jar sat waiting for him.

In the remaining light cast from the stairway, Dave watched as the woman tore into a slice of cold pizza. This time he could hear the loud smacking of her lips and grinding of her teeth, and as she lifted a glass of dark red wine up to her lips, the tiny man heard the loud gulps of the giantess as she tossed back enough wine for him to drown in.

“I can't wait to find that little perv,” she whispered, though whether she thought he'd be able to hear it or not, Dave wasn't sure. She chuckled to herself before taking another bite of the pizza and crossing to the stairs.

As she went up, Dave heard her muttering continue but within seconds all the lights in the house were out and he found himself retreating back beneath the piano to try and sleep.

It seemed he had barely closed his eyes before they were snapping open once again, in the distance, he saw Sydney's bare feet crash down onto the floor. Her toenails, now painted in the same bright blue she had told him about yesterday, caught the early morning sunlight as she raced across the front room into the living room.

Dave found himself curling into a ball, and pressing his hands against his ears as he heard her let out a screech of rage. The noise was almost instantly followed by her growling, “You little shit, where are you?” He heard her shoving furniture about once again as she stomped about the floor, moving into the kitchen, and then he saw her come back into the front room.

Her pale blue eyes raked across the floor, and he watched as she assessed each piece of furniture. As she moved toward the china closet, Dave rapidly crawled toward the wall and then tried to scramble up onto the backside of the piano. The lacquered wood was hard for him to get a hold of and everything began to shake with Sydney's approach. With no time left, he scurried behind one of the caster wheels and tried to make himself as small as he could.

Whump!

A gust of wind billowed across the underside of the piano as Sydney laid down on the floor to look beneath it. Her breath came in powerful gales as she peered across the underside looking for him. Dave's heart hammered in his chest and every muscle in his body screamed at him to run but he forced himself to stand still.

An angry grunt followed by the ground rumbling as she stood back up made Dave almost fall over with relief. Sydney's footfalls were still angry stomps, but they retreated back to the kitchen as she fixed herself a quick breakfast.

Not wanting to chance her double-checking the piano, Dave made a mad dash for the china closet, skidding beneath it as he watched Sydney cross back through the room accompanied by the clatter of a spoon hitting a bowl. The realization that she was carrying food back up to her room made the little man's stomach growl and his heart sink, if she was leaving behind crumbs, they wouldn't be in the kitchen.

Cowering beneath the closet, he counted down the seconds until Sydney returned and made her way to school. To his surprise however, it was Sydney's mother who came down first. For the first time ever, Dave saw her dressed in a plain robe and pajamas, her feet adorned in comfortable slippers rather than the stilettos he had always seen her wear. He watched as her feet thumped past, and then a second later he smelled something glorious; coffee.

The pull of rich fresh roasted coffee almost pulled him out from his hiding spot. The tiny man found himself wondering exactly how he had never smelled it in the immense home before. His whole body shook with hunger and desire as he tried to imagine the taste on his lips after almost a year without it.

His thoughts were again derailed by the arrival of Sydney, her saddle shoes still clean from the last time he had been forced to lick them spotless. Peeking out from his hiding spot, Dave watched as she passed, her face a mixture of rage, confusion, and clear pain.

“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother's voice boomed from the kitchen, “I'm sure he'll turn up.”

“I just don't know why he would try to run away!” Sydney pouted.

Dave fought the urge to roll his eyes at this, as if the girl hadn't just yesterday made him beg for food and scrape gunk out from her toenails.

“I'm sure he can't be very far-”

“Yeah, cause that fat cat next door will probably eat him!” Sydney cried, and suddenly Dave felt a strange pang of regret before he reminded himself that she had threatened to kill him only a few hours earlier.

“Honey...” was all Sydney's mom managed to say before the girl collected herself and stomped out the front door.

Dave watched as the teenager wrenched it open and smashed it shut with such speed and force that he realized he'd have been torn to shreds if he had attempted to follow.

In the distance, he heard the girl's mother heave an immense sigh, “What the fuck is so special about some shrunken idiot, I'll never understand.” The giantess then walked back up the stairs, with her mug of coffee in hand, but this time Dave could hear her ranting clear as day, “First, she wanted him dead, and now I bet if I stepped on that little perv she'd cry for days. By the time she gets home from school who the fuck knows what she'll want!”

The words made the tiny man creep deeper back into the shadows of the closet's underside before thinking better of it, he moved back to the piano. High above him, every creak of the house made him pause terrified that it was about to precede Sydney's mother descending. When he reached the piano after several painstaking pauses, he crawled back to the wall and slowly pulled himself up onto the piano's backside.

Even with the little wheels it rested on, he doubted either woman would be able to move it enough to see him nestled there. It was a far safer position than anywhere else and as he heard Sydney's mother enter the room with the distinct click-booms of her heels, he listened as she made a circuit similar to her daughter's. Furniture was shoved and shaken, but he remained undiscovered when her car finally pulled away.

Gathering what little strength he had, Dave finally pushed himself out of his hiding spot long after Sydney's mother had left. The sun bathed the entire first floor with tons of natural light and he was able to fully explore the place without any hope of being discovered. By the time he had gone through all three rooms for the fifth time, he collapsed in the middle of the floor and seriously considered throwing himself at Sydney's mercy.

There were no vents for him to sneak through, no weak patches of drywall that he could have tried to tear open, and most certainly no crumbs for him to eat. Laying on the floor, the whole world seemed to spin and he was only dimly aware of his body as a heavy leaden thing with a desert where a human mouth should be.

As he heard the soft drip drip of a leaky pipe, the tiny man thought he had finally broken and was hallucinating. It took Dave several long minutes to realize he had not gone mad, and there was a leaky pipe somewhere. Scrambling to his feet, he took several swaying steps in every direction before moving toward the sound.

Within a few minutes he found himself inside a seemingly untouched bathroom that was tucked next to the entrance to the garage. It was a narrow half-bath that probably only got used when the giantesses entertained, something that Dave dimly realized was a rarity in the townhouse. Outside of Haley, Sydney rarely invited her friends over, and her mother seemed to be constantly working.

Pushing the thoughts from his mind he made his way toward the soft splashing noise of fresh water. Only to find himself again falling to his knees as he realized the water was coming from a pipe leading to the toilet.

The metal above him gleamed and shined like it was brand new and the pool that formed on the tile floor was clear. There was no rust to taint it, and as far as the tiny man could tell he was the first human to enter that bathroom in months. The pipe itself was narrow and going to the tank, it had nothing to do with taking waste away, and yet the thought of lowering himself to drink from the pool made him cringe.

Time dragged on for what seemed an eternity before Dave finally succumbed to his need for water. He lowered his face to it like an animal at a watering hole, and practically moaned as the sweet cool water passed over his cracking lips. Sucking it down and groaning as each drop splashed against his warm skin, all the tiny man could think, Three days without water my ass.

He knew from when he was surviving on the streets that it was impossible to function without water in about a day, or less than that when you had to fight for your survival. Gulping down more water, Dave reminded himself that he could go longer without food if he had water, which he thankfully now did.

However, what he really needed was a way out.

Stepping out of the bathroom, he stumbled when he turned to his right and so the garage door looming before him. He blinked again and again as he realized the hinges of the two doors were on opposite sides and they were separated by barely any space. All Dave would need to do was hide in the bathroom and rush headlong around the corner when the door opened.

Taking deep breaths to calm himself down, the tiny man trekked back across the front room and returned to his shelter on the far side of the piano to wait out his soon to be former teenage taskmistress. Sitting on the piano, watching as the walls changed colors with the fading sun, Dave tried to plot out how he would escape the garage but told himself to wait until he could actually move about it to figure things out.

Time seemed to move by like molasses as he sat there waiting, and then suddenly the front door crashed open. He breathed a sigh of relief as he heard Sydney traipse upstairs, followed by the distant sound of her music, which sounded slightly sadder than usual. Dave shook his head as he tried once more and failed to comprehend the young girl's feelings about him escaping.

Despite the water invigorating him, he drifted in and out of consciousness as he heard Sydney enter the kitchen and fix herself something to eat. His own stomach rumbled in response, but he listened carefully for the girl to return upstairs before he enacted his plan.

Dropping down from the piano, he skulked across its underside before moving into the shadowy corner beside it and then slowly walking across the front room. Most of his body screamed at him to run, but he knew better than to waste his energy, he'd need every bit of it for the mad sprint into the garage. As he crossed in front of the kitchen's entryway, he heard the rumbling of Sydney descending, and as panic surged through his body he put everything he had into reaching the bathroom.

He dove over its threshold as he felt her first quaking footfall hit the ground.

Scrambling he stood and pressed himself against the wall, praying to escape her notice as he watched the giantess pass by. She carrying two immense bowls stacked atop each other in one hand and her phone in the other, dressed in baggy pajama bottoms and a plain tank top. The few flashes he caught of her face showed the giantess frowning, but as she returned and her thumb flew across the screen, the frown was momentarily replaced with a smile.

Sydney's immense feet stopped short, and Dave fought the urge to scream, fearing he had been discovered. Instead, as he inched closer to the shadow of the tall sink, he chanced a look at the sky and breathed a sigh of relief as he realized she was simply focusing on her the text she was writing. He had seen the look of concentration a dozen times on the girl whenever she texted with Chase.

Then her feet suddenly turned on heel and the girl stepped into the bathroom, making Dave's heart pound faster. The light came on and fighting every instinct to run for cover, he slowly and deliberately made his way to the far side of the toilet bowl as Sydney stopped in front of the mirror. Cowering on the far side of the toilet, he peered around the side to see Sydney take off her shirt and then begin to take several topless selfies.

Dave pulled himself back to stay in the shadow of the bowl, cringing every time he heard the snap of the camera app on her phone. After far too many clicks, Sydney simply flicked the lights off and strolled out of the room humming to herself.

Still recoiling from almost being discovered, Dave tried to push the thoughts of Sydney sending those pictures out of his mind. He then drank as much as he could before returning to his ready position at the bathroom's doorway.

The shrunken man could feel his body starting to sway as he heard the car pull into the garage. Slapping himself to wake himself back up, Dave began to bounce in place and shake his arms out to loosen up his muscles. The moment he heard the tumblers of the door start to move, he burst into action.

His legs pumped furiously and he could see the door burst open, a gust of cold air blowing out from it and threatening to knock him over. He plowed forward even as he saw the pointed toe of a stiletto boot fill the open space ahead of him. Lowering himself, he watched as the booted foot sailed over his head, and Sydney's titanic mother stepped over him without ever knowing he was there.

Biting his lip so he didn't let out a whoop of victory, Dave didn't even realize that there was no more floor in front of him. His foot hit open air and his limbs windmilled as he crashed down to the garage's cement floor.

His body screamed with pain and when the door crashed shut, Dave found himself in total darkness, but one step closer to freedom.