Fulda bent over, extending her titanic hands downward toward us. Her long fingers engulfed Anni before wrapping around me, holding my body against the breadth of her palm. I was wrapped in her soft skin and surrounded by her body heat during the ascent, while my stomach fell into the floor and spots dotted my vision. Vibrations ran through my body, then her fingers peeled back to reveal two bright blue circles staring at us from beyond the edge of her palm.
“So, my little friends,” Fulda boomed, a self-satisfied smirk spreading across her face. “Have a lot of fun while I was away?” In the silence her grin spoke volumes. She had to have known what we were up to when she came in.
“Yeah, we did,” Anni butted in. “We’re both small as fuck, so naturally we banged at the first opportunity. I mean, it’s not like he can fuck you anymore, right? He had a lot of pent-up frustration and doesn’t want to get lost in your cunt.” My jaw dropped. She was making it sound even worse than it was!
The low rumble of Fulda’s chuckle shook me while she turned her gaze to her other hand. “Anni, you sarcastic bitch,” she began, closing her fingers around her again, “I knew we were friends for reasons other than being the tallest girls in class.” Two fingertips settled on Anni’s shoulders and yanked her back against Fulda’s palm. “But now you fit inside my hand. It’d be nice if you acted like it, huh?” She kept the same grin plastered across her face, making me uneasy while she regarded Anni.
Under Fulda’s scrutiny, Anni dropped the act. “Okay, you want to know what really happened?” she asked. Fulda nodded once in response, so she continued. “We’re both fucking tiny, okay. I was having a hard time with it, and he comforted me about it. He’s been small longer and seemed like he knew what he was talking about, so I listened. He made me feel better, and that’s it. There, you satisfied?”
Fulda’s eyes shifted toward me, and I felt myself withering under her icy gaze. “So, my tiny, totally committed, monogamous boyfriend.” This was way too much, she definitely knew what happened. “Is that true? The two of you just talked while I was gone?”
“Yeah, obviously we just talked,” I lied. “She was distraught, and I’m probably the only person in the world who knows what she was going through. She was really in a bad way though, and I hope what I said can help her make it through until tomorrow.” Just one squeeze, I thought, and she’ll expose us for the liars we are.
Luckily the crushing hand never came, and Fulda pulled back to regard both of us. “Well, that all makes sense. My little boyfriend always had a way with words. How else do you think he talked his way into the pants of this absolutely perfect ass?” She winked in my direction before continuing. “But I’m not here to talk about what I missed. Either of you got a question for me before I move on?”
“Yeah, I do,” Anni spoke up before I had a chance. “How fucking tall is she now?” With her thumb she gestured toward the door, obviously meaning Gina.
Fulda blushed a little bit, buffeting me with the strong exhale from her nose. “Oh, she’s huge now,” she admitted. “Like, over eight feet tall. She dwarfs me. I mean, she’s still growing like a weed so she was going to anyway, it’s just that now she’ll cap out at close to ten. How does that make you feel, miss always the tallest?” Her eyes darted back to me. “Or you, mister loves tall women? You think a hundred times your height will be tall enough?” She smiled again. “I’m just fucking with you. But seriously, she’s over eight feet now and still growing. She’s going to be enormous by the time she’s done.”
Great, just what the world needed. A gigantic Gina. No doubt she’ll begin tormenting her shorter classmates first thing on Monday, maybe even shrinking them down and bringing them home with her. Fulda had probably created a monster with her lessons, even more vicious than she was. “Well, what are you here for?” I asked, trying to focus on the task at hand.
“Have you no patience, my pint-sized partner?” Fulda replied, prodding me with one if her fingers. I staggered forward trying to steady myself while she continued. “I had a whole lead in ready to go, a positively enrapturing monologue that would keep you on the edge of my palm, but you had to go and jump the gun.” She laid down on her bed, propping herself up on one of her pillows, and moved us onto her belly. With a quick turn of her wrists she turned her hands vertical, dumping Anni and me onto the thin blue fabric stretched across her abs.
“It’s so rare that I get to have two shrunken friends at the same time.” Every one of Fulda’s syllables vibrated through her abdomen and up our bodies, shaking us with her tremendous voice. “Normally I’d crush one or make them fight it out, but I don’t really want to do that to either of you. I’m going to play a game with you instead.” Her eyes locked onto me. I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to escape to. “You might remember it from your first day with me, but there’s a twist. I’m going to let you two run around the house. In an hour I’ll come looking for you, and you better do your best to evade me. At the same time though, other giantesses will be out and about too. Whichever one catches you gets to keep you, and she can do whatever she wants to you. If you avoid being caught until sundown… We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I don’t expect it to happen. Ready?”
Before we could reply Fulda sat up, spilling us off from her torso. I landed on her thigh and kept rolling, cascading over her knee and sliding down her shin. With extreme velocity I rolled down her ankle and skidded over her shoe until I soared off that as well, coming to a rest several inches away on the carpet. My skin was covered in bright red rug burns while I laid there moaning. A foot away, before Fulda’s other shoe, Anni was doing the same. Fulda untied her shoe and pulled it off, revealing the clean white sock beneath. “Get hiding,” she declared.
I was slow to get up, much like Anni was. Was this really happening? We were still sore from last night, and she wanted to play some silly game with us. Fulda was quick to rectify our reluctance however. Once she got her shoes off she prodded us with her toes, forcing us to get to our feet or be crushed under hers. “The clock’s already started, you two!” she bellowed. When we were up we made a beeline for the door, eager to get away from the smug grin Fulda gave while she sat in domination over us.
After several minutes we reached the hallway past Fulda’s door, and Anni stopped me with a hand across my chest. “I think we should split up,” she suggested. “I know one of these ‘other giantesses’ will be Gina, and I don’t want her to have the satisfaction of finding both of us without making her work for it.”
“I totally agree,” I said. “I don’t know how many other people there will be, but she’s going to be one, and she’s going to be merciless if she catches us. I’ll go somewhere downstairs, and you find somewhere upstairs?”
Anni nodded. “One of us should be safe then,” she said, pulling me into a hug. While my face was held against her crotch she continued, “If you get caught I hope it’s by anyone but her.”
My hands gravitated to her butt, partly out of habit and partly because it was the most convenient place. “You too.” We parted, and I watched her walk toward the door opposite the stairs for a bit before turning back toward the steps myself. If any of Fulda’s guests knew the house better than me it would be Anni, and I was confident she would be able to find some shelter for a few hours at least.
After three steps I regretted volunteering to take this route. Every step was a terrible drop, resulting in me hanging off the lip of the platform I was on before dropping down to the next one. There would be fifteen steps, I knew, and each one brought the same discomfort as worry as the one before. Even though the landing was cushioned by the plush carpet common throughout the top floor of Fulda’s house, each landing felt like hell on my knees, and I was surprised that my legs didn’t break during my descent.
It took about half an hour for me to reach the bottom, nestled among the long fibers of a rug set along the base. Knowing time was short I figured I would never make it to the kitchen, even though it probably had the best hiding places. The dining room was a stretch too, and it was mostly wide open spaces. That left somewhere in the living room and the master bedroom to find in my increasingly short time.
I decided on the master bedroom, for all the difference it would make. Carefully I waded through the rug onto the hardwood floors, and took the time to steady myself on the much more slick surface. Then I headed off in a jog toward the closed door several feet away from me, glad for the minute bubbling of the lacquer that kept my feet from sliding at this size. After my trip down the stairs, getting to run in a straight line was practically heaven.
Once at the door I quickly slipped under it and took account of my surroundings. Hiding places were much less bountiful than I had expected: a dresser and a pair of nightstands, with a king-sized bed dominating the middle of the room with some women’s shoes lining the near side of it. The closet and bathroom were also available, but those would be among the first places people would look once they came in here. My chances of lasting until sundown were going from marginal to non-existent.
A knock at the front door reminded me of the imminence of my task – coming downstairs must have taken more time than I thought. Footsteps began pounding down the stairs, and I darted forward. I ran between a pair of stiletto heels, vaulting over the shoes’ fronts to go sliding over the toes, and continued to the bed. Urgently I passed under the curtain of sheets and slipped under the bed, just in time for footfalls to begin thundering on the floor behind me. While I assessed the desert beneath the plateau above me the door opened, effectively locking me into this spot for the duration.
The front door creaked open. “Hey, you’re early!” Fulda’s voice penetrated the door between us. “Come on in and take off your shoes. I’ll go get my sisters so we can get started.” A jumble of thuds rumbled through the floor while they entered and dropped their shoes. Cautiously I headed toward the wall the bed was pushed up against and took refuge behind one of its legs. If I were lucky they might overlook me when they scoured this room looking for someone.
An interminable series of poundings came moments later. “Holy shit you shot up overnight,” one of the newcomers said. “Do any of your clothes still fit you anymore?”
“And you’re still a tiny little bitch,” Gina replied, ignoring the second bit. “Better hope I don’t try to walk off with you today if you cross my path.”
“Hey, everyone chill out,” Fulda interceded. “We’re all here for the same reason. Everyone read my message, right?” She waited a beat before continuing. “Good. They’ve had enough time to get hidden by now, I just told them it was an hour because it was a nice, round measurement. So get looking for them!” Her speech was punctuated by another outburst of thuds and my growing dread.
To my relief no one came through the doorway yet. The main indication that anyone had stayed downstairs was the loud clanging of metal pots and pans banging against each other. “Why are you looking up there?” one of them asked. “They’re too small to climb that far up, they’ll be closer to the ground.”
“Huh, that’s a good point, Lyss,” came the other, deeper voice. Cabinets slammed shut and glasses rattled together following that revelation. The pair downstairs bantered while they fruitlessly searched in the kitchen, making an impressive racket while they did so. Though they had started on the other end of the floor I felt absolutely no relief: they still had the rest of the day to find me and nothing better to do.
Their chatter persists while they progress through the dining room and then the living room. Interspersed with the inanities of their lives that I could hardly care less about, they actively coordinated in dividing up the rooms they were searching. Because of this division of labor they cleared the rooms much more quickly than I had expected, and in only a couple of hours they had cleared everything between us.
The door swung inward, followed by two pairs of enormous socked feet pounding onto the faded hardwood floors. One pair of shins leading up was a deep brown, while the other was the color of pure marble. “I’ll take the bathroom and closet, you take the bed,” came the lower voice, confident but wrong about where I was hiding. Now that they were only a few feet from me again their voices had taken on terrifying qualities again, blending their human speech with those of a storm.
While the darker legs stepped off to the side the almost painfully light ones came forward and planted themselves abeam the bed. In one powerful stroke she yanked the blankets from the bed’s surface, dropping them with a clatter beyond its far edge. “Hm, no one here,” she remarked to herself while tossing the pillows aside to similar results.
Her pale legs bent in half when she squatted beside the bed, and two slender hands took hold of the shoes I had recently run between. Roughly she picked them up and turned them upside down, shaking them out for any possible inhabitants. When that failed to yield any results she tossed the stiletto heels to the side and moved on to the pair beside it. In no more than a minute she had exhausted all the shoes laid out in the room and closed in on my hiding place.
Thin fingers slipped beneath the sheets hanging down near the floor, and with one swift motion she lifted the fabric up. Gray eyes framed by blond hair peered into the space beneath the bed, scanning the empty floor. I darted back and pressed myself up against the mahogany leg, praying that she hadn’t spotted me. My heart was pounding in my chest and I was on the verge of hyperventilating, hoping that I would keep going unnoticed.
Two fingers creeping around the wooden edge dashed my hopes. Before I could react they slammed into me, driving me backwards and throwing me prone onto the wooden floor. While I laid there helpless she withdrew that hand, sending her other one in to seal the deal. “Gotcha!” she declared, launching it toward me. In an instant her slim fingers had overtaken me and pressed me into her palm, firmly ending any illusions I had of making it through this with my freedom.
Moments later the fingers uncurled and I found myself basking in the glow of Alyssa’s face peering down at me. Pink freckles dotted her light skin all over, and her lips were pulled tight in a grin. “Hi there, little guy!” she bellowed, revealing two rows of perfectly straight white teeth. Her breath had a hint of mint on it, and the force of her voice nearly blew me back onto her fingers. “Looks like you’re mine for a while, huh?” My terror must have been palpable, because she gently stroked me with a finger from her free hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat you like my ex. I mean, you don’t have a thing for being shrunk down like this, right?” I doubted she was interested in the answer, regardless of what it was: even if I did I had a clear reason to lie.
In any case she spun around and went back through the doorway, and I turned to see where we were going. The others had come downstairs while Alyssa was looking for me and taken a seat on the couch. Gina in particular stood out: it looked as though she were sitting on furniture designed for children, with her knees significantly above the couch cushions and her shoulders far above the top. Everyone else, even Fulda, looked like dwarves beside her, not even coming up to her shoulders. To my relief she looked upset, to the point where she was barely containing a tantrum, and I guessed that she was not the one who found Anni.
Alyssa wasn’t even able to sit down before Fulda noticed her. “It looks like the two winners of today’s contest are Alyssa and… me!” she exclaimed, proudly revealing Anni standing in her palm.
“It’s not fair!” Gina protested. “You can’t play in your own game, she must have-“
“Quiet, or we’ll have three winners today,” Fulda interrupted. “Do you want to spend another day in Jess’s shoe box, or should I get a jar this time?” That worked to keep Gina quiet, allowing Fulda to continue. “I really hope you have fun with your prize, just give him back to me at school Monday okay?”
“Oh, sure thing,” Alyssa replied, glancing down at me in her hand. Involuntarily a sly smile spread across her face. “I think we’re going to have a lot of fun before then.” She walked to the door, leaving her friends in the living room with Anni and me doing my best to balance on her open palm. When the door closed behind her it finally hit home that Alyssa effectively owned me for now, and her low giggles did little to reassure me.