The primal desire to flee filled my body, and I pushed myself away from Mary into a stumbling run away from her. I made it several steps, nearly falling over myself the whole way, before Mary’s enormous hand swiped me off the floor. While she held me in her palm she reached into Fulda’s back and groped around for something. When her hand re-emerged, it was clutching the tube of lip gloss that had menaced me earlier, and Mary let out a low chuckle.
“Aw, trying to get away?” she taunted. “We can’t have that. If you got lost in here, someone might step on you, entirely by accident!” Mary’s finger pressed down on me while she unscrewed the tube in her other hand. Carefully she withdrew it, then shifted her grip on me so that most of my back was uncovered. The q-tip applicator roughly pressed against me, slathering my back side in Fulda’s lip gloss. When she was done, she dropped it roughly on the hard floor then set me down face-up in front of her, then pressed down along the length of my body. “Better if I do it on purpose.”
I tried to get up, but I was held firmly to the concrete beneath me. The most I could do was wiggle my fingers in a vain attempt to loosen the rapidly cementing lip gloss holding me to the floor while Mary stepped forward, placing her feet so that she stood astride me. After a brief moment of her doing her best to intimidate me, she lifted up her shoe and set it down in front of me, heel several inches from my feet. Her foot easily stretched far enough to cover me, eclipsing my view of her manic face while she threatened my helpless body.
“But when is it going to be?” Mary asked rhetorically. She began lowering her foot toward me and taunted, “Is it going to be now?” Just before the tread made contact with my face she diverted it onto the ground beside me, fully pressing her weight into it. Quickly she lifted her foot back up and centered it again. “Or how about… now?” Her foot descended toward me once more, nearly to where the rubber touched my nose, before it slammed down on my other side, its rumble accompanied by Mary’s laugh.
“You’re just so small and pathetic,” Mary began, “any of these little steps could wipe you out.” She laid her foot down beside me, the white sole of her shoe nearly clipping my arm. Her foot began bouncing up and down as she incessantly tapped her foot, the pounding driving into my ear along with the vibrations. Suddenly it swept over me, coming down with a crash hard enough to make my innards shake when it slammed against the floor and resumed its ceaseless tapping.
Mary loomed over me, her malicious grin never leaving her face the whole time she played this game with me. She ran through several cycles of this, each time bringing her foot a bit closer when it landed, before finally pulling her foot back. “I think something grander should snuff out the great Fulda’s boyfriend, wouldn’t you agree?” A dark chuckle punctuated her statement. I tried to move, but found that I was still stuck fast by the lip gloss.
Mary raised her foot up, bringing her knee to her chest, and let it hang there briefly. Swiftly she brought it down, just missing me with her stomp. A wave of sound from her foot slamming into the ground beat against my ears while the ground beneath me trembled. She said something, probably mocking and she would think witting, but my ears were ringing too loudly for me to make it out.
Almost immediately she pulled her foot back up, holding it much the same as she had previously, before bringing it down beside me again. The boom from her tremendous stomp devastated what was left of my hearing in that ear, and the shockwaves weakened my muscles until it seemed like they shorted out my central nervous system. I couldn’t even wiggle my fingers and toes while she laughed down at me, taking immense pleasure in my predicament.
Once more Mary pulled her foot back, striking her toe against the ground while she looked down at me with a cruel spark in her eye. “You are so helpless,” she said, the movements of her lips slow and deliberate so that I could read it. Swiftly she raised her foot yet again to stomp it down, bringing it on a direct course to land on me until it suddenly stopped. Luckily for me she had been leaning to the side slightly, and she stopped just short of flattening me. This time her shoe was close enough that I could see the minute irregularities in the tread and smell the grass she had earlier walked across in these shoes.
Mary pulled her foot up again, and from the look on her face and the gleam in her eye I could tell this would be the last. Sadism shone from every fiber of her being while she wound up, and the enormous grin as her foot descended left no doubts as to what her intentions were this time. I tried to get out of the way, but even if my arms and legs were listening to me and capable of movement her foot was coming down too fast, and I was sure to be pulverized anyway.
A bolt of blue shot across my vision, and the imperiling shoe was thrown aside. The sound of something slamming against metal filled the room, and the two legs standing over me had been cast aside, only to be replaced with two different ones perpendicular to Mary’s pair. Pressure on my ears indicated that my hearing was in the process of recovering, and this interloping giantess had said something. “I’ll fucking show you helpless!” it seemed like she said, and after bowling Mary out of the way it seemed like she could make good on her promise.
I looked over what I could see of my apparent savior, trying to discern who it was who had saved me from certain death. Black athletic shoes seemed to be popular in all the programs here, so those were inconclusive. Long white tube socks up to the base of her knees were also common in many sports, though the long stretch of open, lightly tanned skin on her thighs helped narrow it down. The tiny blue elastic shorts pulled to the point of bursting that barely covered anything indicated that she’s a volleyball player, and the patently absurd length of her legs and tightness of her shorts made me think this wasn’t Fulda. Which left only one option: Anni!
“You like picking on people smaller than you, huh?” Anni shouted, pinning Mary against the now-dented wall of lockers. While the raven-haired giantess struggled to push her off, Anni grabbed her beneath the armpits and hoisted her up so that they were eye to eye. The sound of ringing metal echoed through the locker room, and Mary’s feet dangled helplessly in the air. Anni placed her forearm over Mary’s windpipe, pressing down and gagging the cheerleader. “Not so fun to have someone huge fucking with you, is it?”
Though her situation seemed hopeless, Mary’s face was still a mask of grim determination. She grabbed a handful of Anni’s hair near the scalp and yanked her forward, moving out of the way just in time so that her forehead slammed into the sheet of metal behind her. Anni staggered backward, stunned from the blow, and Mary capitalized on her dazed state by planting a shoulder in her stomach and trying to tackle her.
Mary drove Anni back until she ran into a bench, tripping her and sending her sprawling. The ground quaked with the impact of Anni’s ass, and rumbled again when Mary landed atop her. Anni’s head came down near enough to me that some stray hairs from her head brushed over me, and I could see the glazed look in her soft brown eyes. For her part, Mary looked completely crazed while she mounted Anni, sitting on the taller woman’s stomach and relishing her triumph.
Long fingers ran though Anni’s hair, and Mary seized another clump of hair with her tight grip. She lifted Anni’s head from the concrete, but before she could slam it into the floor Anni grabbed her by the wrist. Try as she might Mary could not overcome the volleyball player’s strength, and Anni used the time she wasted going so to get a hand on her opposite shoulder. A single violent twist and the two were reversed, with Anni straddling Mary whose head rested only a few inches from me, nose to the ground. The kinetic force from them wrestling dissipated through the floor and blurred my vision as my entire helpless body was shaken.
“How does it fucking feel, huh?” Anni asked through gritted teeth while she drove her knee into Mary’s back. “To know that no matter how much you try, someone bigger than you can do whatever they want, and you can’t do shit about it?” One of Mary’s dark eyes lighted on me, still prone and stuck to the floor where she had left me. In a flash her hand struck, fingers splayed out to swat me like a bug. The shadow of her tremendous hand engulfed me, and her palm raced down fast enough to instantly obliterate me when it hit.
Skin slapped against skin, and I was not smashed like an insect beneath Mary’s palm. As fast as it descended it left, this time with Anni’s solid grip around its wrist. “Leave him the fuck alone!” Anni bellowed, and with a great heave she lifted Mary off the ground. In no time at all Anni had her arm wrapped around Mary’s neck again, pushing forward on her head with her other hand. A single powerful leg wrapped around my assailant, keeping her pinned against Anni’s body, while her other leg ran the length of Mary’s body and then some, her ankle forming a bridge over me between her foot and the rest of her leg.
While she struggled to breathe Mary thrashed about, her legs scrabbling to get leverage that Anni would never let her have. Several times Mary’s heel kicked Anni’s indomitable leg above me, and I’m fairly sure were it not for her I would have been crushed yet. Suddenly, she became slow and lethargic, and soon after she had stopped entirely. Anni let go of her unconscious body, sliding out from behind her, and propped her up against the side of the bench. She took a moment to glare at her defeated opponent before standing to her full height and squaring up with me.
Even though she had just saved my life, Anni towering over me still terrified me. She was just so big; her colossal legs rose like great pillars beneath her toned body, a bulging white tarp covering her shins and calves and her rock-hard thighs laid bare. All it would take is a single step and she would snuff me out. I remembered way back, jumping up and trying to pull her ponytail, but only being able to reach her butt, then her sitting on me and talking about how she ought to flatten me…
But she didn’t. “You okay, little guy?” she asked. I nodded: she hadn’t hurt me despite all her threats, and the worst she had done was stick me to the floor. “Y’know, they say to understand someone you have to walk a mile in their shoes.” I had never heard Anni wax philosophical, but I suppose she had to do something when she wasn’t offering to let me borrow her rope and pickaxe so I could scale Mount Fulda. “And, since my shoes alone would be a mile for you, I decided to learn something from my experience this weekend.” Ah, there it was. “I hope you can forgive me for being so shitty to you just because you’re really small compared to me.”
“Anni, you saved my life,” I said, startled by her apology. “As far as I’m concerned we’re more than-“ The crash of a metal door opening cut me off, followed by a series of rhythmic thuds. Seconds later Fulda emerged from behind Anni, who took a few wide-mouthed moments to evaluate the carnage of their fight.
“What the hell happened here?” she asked, staring at Mary’s unconscious body laying against the bench. She may not have even noticed me, and stuck as I was I would be hard-pressed to get her attention.
“Mary found your boyfriend,” Anni related with a sigh. “I walked in on her in the middle of tormenting him before stomping on him. I was able to stop her before she hurt him, but he hasn’t moved at all since then. He might be stuck to the floor.” She pointed at me with a laconic hand, and Fulda’s eyes followed her gesture.
Fulda’s eyes found me easily with the help, then she scanned the area around me. “Oh shit,” she muttered. “The rest of the team will be in here in like ten seconds, and if she stuck him to the floor with my lip gloss we’ll have to peel him off. We’ll have to move fast, and I don’t want to risk breaking anything, so…” A cacophony of pounding footsteps entered the locker room, breaking her train of thought. “Fuck, we’ll need to improvise! Don’t worry, just follow my lead. And you.” She pointed at me, narrowing her eyes. “Keep not moving at all, okay?” Easy enough, I supposed.
Twenty enormous feet thundered into the concrete and cinder block room like a stampede. Their shadows cast against the walls made the group of vertically gifted women seem cartoonishly huge, each one growing to fill the room before the next one took her place. They began going about their routines, a titanic blond nearly crushing me out of negligence as she went to her locker.
“Hey ladies, circle up!” Fulda shouted, interrupting their post-practice activities. All of them groaned in unison, sounding like a gust of wind blowing through an orchard of creaky trees. Slowly they shambled toward the center, each of them taking up positions around Fulda – around me. “Now, can anyone tell me what this is?” She was pointing right at me, directing their attention solely onto my helpless body stuck in the middle of all of them.
The circle of gigantic women leaned in to look more closely at me, each practically a mountain in her own right. Their identical black sneakers formed an impervious wall around me, twenty feet high in some places, and their meaty calves and thighs stretched so high I could never hope to climb even one. Blond, brunette, or red hair capped each of the peaks, beneath which irises which ran the whole spectrum of colors bored into me. Under the scrutiny of this team of titanesses I felt positively miniscule. I began to feel light-headed from them corralled around me, as though I were about to start shrinking again just from their presence.
“Some piece of trash?” offered a brunette, the shortest of the team.
“No, it’s a bug!” interjected the green-eyed blond beside her with a disgusted face.
The gargantuan blond who had nearly stepped on me earlier had come closer, resting on a knee so that she could inspect me more closely with her clear blue eyes. “Is that… a man?” she asked, her eyes going wide. She was about to poke me when Fulda began laughing and nudged her away.
“Come on Vicky, get real, a man? Have any of you ever seen a man that small? Other than my ex, that is.” All of them burst out laughing, a rumbling guffaw that rivaled a jet turbine. “For how he just skipped town though he might as well be that big.”
“No offense Fulda, but I’m glad he’s gone,” interjected the brunette who thought I was trash. “Every time he was around I felt like he was staring at our asses.”
“Not like he could help it,” the blond who nearly avoided manslaughter replied. “He was lucky if he was taller than any of them. I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about stepping on him anymore.” Funny, it didn’t seem like she was that concerned to begin with.
Fulda suppressed a grin. “We can all talk about how small and useless my ex is later,” she began, “this is serious. Kate was closest to right earlier when she guessed it was trash. This disgusting piece of filth is someone’s used wad of gum.” Vicky grimaced when she remembered that she nearly touched me and recoiled back to her spot in the circle. “Now, I know it’s finals week and we’re all goofing around, and soon it’ll be summer and some of us will have graduated. But we need to keep caring for this place and not leave our repulsive wads of garbage on the floor, strewn about, just waiting for someone to step on it and get stuck to their shoes. Now I know none of you did it, I’m betting it was her.” She pointed toward Mary, who was blearily returning to consciousness. “Just one of my fellow cheerleaders playing a prank. Just want to make sure you all know not to let this place become a sty, and point out the gum so that nobody steps in it. Got it?” Mumbled affirmations came from all around. “Good. Now everyone go home, I’ll have the janitor scrape this place clean in case they left any other surprises for us.” As one the giantesses dispersed, their tremendous footfalls shaking me until I was numb all over.
Anni carried Mary out along with the others, leaving me and Fulda alone. After the door slammed shut Fulda knelt down beside me, placing her knee a few inches from me. “Fuck that was close,” she said. “I was really worried when Vicky was right and nearly touched you, she seems like a stomp first, ask questions later kind of girl.” As I gazed up at her I was overcome by the sight of her colossal thigh beside me, and only refrained from climbing onto it because I was physically unable. “Now c’mon, let me get you out of here so we can get home.”
Fulda pulled a wooden nail file out of her handbag and tenderly held it with both hands. She slid it behind my head and began driving it downward, carefully prying me off the floor. The hardened lip gloss was brittle and cracked under the force, and in short order I was free. However, all the seismic activity in the last few minutes had left my knees week, and I couldn’t even make myself stand up. Luckily I didn’t have to, and Fulda carefully plucked me off the ground. “I’ll take you to get cleaned up,” she said, putting me down in her free hand. “On the bright side, you don’t smell like Alyssa’s feet anymore.” Affectionately she nudged me with her nose and began on her way out of the locker room.