Fulda’s gaze remained cold while she glowered down at me on the mattress. I gulped, wondering just what it was she thought we needed to talk about. By this time I knew that was code for she needs to talk and I need to listen, and that never boded well for a relationship. In my case, where she had all the power, I expected it to go especially poorly for me.
“I’m not really sure how to put this gracefully,” Fulda began. She had never been concerned with grace or diplomacy before, being beyond reproach in the vast majority of situations. My expectations leapt from dismal to bleak. “You know how we were going to go to the same college and stay together after we graduated, right?” I didn’t bother responding to her rhetorical question, and she continued anyway. “Well, you never graduated. Which makes you a high school dropout. I can’t really afford to be tied down to a high school dropout in college.”
Unbelievable. The only reason I had technically dropped out was because she shrank me to begin with, and she was acting as though I had just stopped going to class! Fulda seemed to have noticed the look of disbelief on my tiny face. “Oh, come on, this can’t be a surprise to you,” she elaborated. “Staying together was always a dream, but not realistic. And you’re smaller than my thumb! What life do you really expect us to have together? What could we even do together?”
“B-but I – you – “I sputtered, trying to come up with something in response and failing miserably. I had just spent the night nestled atop her ass, as I had several times before. As far as I could tell this was coming out of nowhere.
“And really, what sort of life do you expect me to have with you fawning at my ankle the whole time?” Fulda continued. The way she barreled through this made me think that this was a prepared speech, as though she had been working on it for quite some time. “Am I going to meet new people and say ‘Hi, I’m Fulda, and this is my bite-sized boyfriend who didn’t even finish school?’ And you know I’m going to meet guys, what am I going to say to them? ‘Yeah, I’m flattered, but I already have a boyfriend. He’s shorter than my big toe.’ Just doing that would put you in an incredible amount of danger, right?”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she was one step ahead of me. “And I’m not going to grow you back, so don’t ask. Everyone likes you more at this size.” She paused, giving herself a moment to brace, and allowing me to get ready for her definitive words. “I’m breaking up with you.”
Even though I had expected this from the very beginning, that did not make it any easier to deal with. “Look, I realize that I’ve put you in a very vulnerable situation, and I’m not going to leave you to fend for yourself.” The clinical manner in which Fulda recited this, as though it were objective fact or supposed to make me feel better, only made this weigh more heavily on me. Just how long had she been planning this? “I already found someone who’s agreed to look after you. It wasn’t difficult, everyone agrees you’re adorable at this size, my friends were practically falling over each other to see who would get you.” I wasn’t sure which was worse, being given away like a doll she no longer wanted or being lied to so blatantly. The memory of her friends competing to see who got to crush me was only a few hours old.
Fulda’s hand slid in from the side, pressing into the mattress as it drew closer. Her fingertip slid under me, and the rest of her hand swept into the expanding indentation. When she had me in the middle of her palm her fingers closed, sealing me within her fist one more time. Before her fingers engulfed me I scanned her face for any hint of remorse or sadness, and found naught but stone in her resolute expression.
The inside of her fist was dark, with only a few pinpricks of light piercing the gloom around me, much as I had become accustomed to. I was thrown back and forth while she waved her hand around, but I was too numb to feel sick, or even a little uncomfortable. For the foreseeable future my life was going to literally be in the hands of whomever Fulda thought was appropriate, and I could only guess at what criteria she used to decide that. So far as I knew I had been paid for, and she was effectively delivering me to the highest bidder.
Clutched in Fulda’s hand, my swinging back and forth quickly settled into the familiar rhythm of her gait, and I mentally ran through the list of possible candidates. After her shrunken weekend and confession that she always thought I was cute, Anni would be the most pleasant option – she might even take me to college with her. Next best was Alyssa, who seemed to find the idea of being a giantess titillating but harbored no desire to kill me. Victoria thought of me as a curiosity, and had saved me last night, but might relish playing with me a little too much. I dreaded what life with Eva could mean, and Mary would be a death sentence. The thought made me shudder, and I fervently hoped she wasn’t taking me to Mary.
I must have gotten lost in thought, since the trek seemed to last only a few seconds. Fulda’s fingers opened, and a featureless white door stood beyond her immaculate digits. “Hey.” Her whisper sliced into my ears, and I turned around to see her pursed lips stretching from one end of my field of vision to the other. “I know you cheated on me with Anni, you little piece of shit. Couldn’t even stay faithful for six hours. I should’ve smashed you back on the dance floor instead of letting you get back together with me. I ought to smash you right now, you pathetic insect, but I think you’ll wish I had soon enough.”
There was no grin to tell me that she was joking, nor was there a light nudge to relieve me. Fulda began lowering me to the floor, her face unusually stoic, and it suddenly hit me: she wasn’t kidding. Fulda had decided to give me to the worst possible option, someone who could mix Mary’s ferocity, Eva’s viciousness, Vicky’s teasing, Alyssa’s curiosity, and Anni’s infatuation and arrogance. She tilted her hand, sending me sliding down the slope of her fingers to land on the carpet in front of her big toe. I looked up from where I came to rest and found something familiar about the door. It clicked in my head, and I began to scream internally.
Fulda knocked on the door, three resounding thuds reminiscent of ascending the scaffold. During the wait I got up and tried to bolt, but Fulda’s foot twitched forward, hitting me dead center and knocking me onto my side. Defeated, I felt the torrent of footsteps reverberating through the floor, unable to escape my impending fate: what feeble attempt I could muster had already been defeated.
The huge brass doorknob turned, each minute movement of its rotation painfully obvious to my primed ears. Slowly the door opened inward, and I desperately hoped I was wrong, or that Fulda was pulling a very deadpan prank. Anything but the reality I was about to face. Soon enough, however, the creaking door revealed a slender, elongated form, the top blocked by the doorframe, with what looked like a shorter, more filled out copy beside it. A fifty percent chance; maybe I’d get lucky after all.
“Oh, look Jess, it’s our half-naked sister who still thinks she’s a giantess,” Gina said once the door had stopped. “What do you want?” This felt rehearsed, another bad sign for me.
“Nothing much,” Fulda replied, grinning. “My boyfriend just walked me home, and I know you’re always so excited to see him.”
“Boyfriend?” Gina repeated. “I only see you. Do you mean to tell me that you have a boyfriend so absolutely puny that he’s fighting for attention with the carpet fibers?”
“That’s right, I forgot!” Fulda slapped her forehead in an exaggerated manner. “He’s so tiny that he might as well be an insect compared to us, I just figured this would seem familiar to you. It’s been exactly like this so many times before, you just had a bit of a growth spurt.” She pointed directly at me, and Gina’s eyes followed.
“Yeah, now I see him!” Gina exclaimed. “He’s such an insignificant little speck that you always have to point him out to me. Honestly it’s a wonder none of us have ever crushed him like a bug by accident. It’d be so easy, and I doubt we’d even notice!”
Fulda threw her head back in a boisterous laugh. “I know! He’s always underfoot like the pest that he is, I have to be extra cautious I don’t squish him with each step. Did I tell you that the other day he fell into my food? I nearly ate him, and I would have if it weren’t for his pathetic cries for help from inside my mouth!” The sisters shared a laugh, the booming ‘ha’s reaching me with enough force to shake my innards.
“Oh, as to why I’m here!” Fulda declared, finally deciding to bring the farce to a close. “I was talking with my pipsqueak the other day, and he told me something really weird, especially for someone as miniscule as him. Apparently, he likes really tall women – like, won’t settle for under six feet – and I guess he noticed your growth spurt and started asking about you. And you know me, honest to a fault, so I told him that you had just started and it looked like it was going to be a big one. I wanted to leave it at that, but the twerp persisted, so I low-balled that you’d stop at about nine and a half feet. After that I couldn’t get the shrimp to talk about anything else. It turns out he wants to be with you now!”
Gina scoffed. “Your teensy-weensy boyfriend knows I’m twelve, right? Why isn’t he obsessed with Anni? She’s tall… I guess.”
“Don’t worry, we talked about that. He doesn’t want to do anything, he just wants to feel extra itty-bitty next to you; he’s a freak who’s into giant ladies, not a monster. His exact words were, ‘The taller the better, I want a woman to really tower over me, and the more I feel like a bug the better,’ or something like that. He’s also really excited that you’re still growing, he said it’d feel like he’s shrinking? Apparently that’s a perk.”
“Well, if the itsy-bitsy little guy wants me to make him feel like a tiny little insect barely worthy of my attention, I can certainly help him with that.” Gina’s smile was all teeth while she regarded me on the floor. “When do you want him back?”
Fulda acted like she was pondering the question. “You know, we talked about that, and we decided it’s best if we break up now. If he wants to feel like an ever-diminishing mite until he’s little more than a speck to you, I don’t want to stand in his way. I truly hope he’s happy feeling like an itsy-bitsy, tiny, puny, miniscule bug that shrinks until you need a magnifying glass to see him. Just keep in mind you’re not likely to find someone so willing to feel small, who actually wants to shrink, that he’ll specifically request it, okay?”
I was in disbelief. Not a single word Fulda said was true, and there was nothing I could do to speak up. Their ears were so far above me that there’s no way they could hear me, and their powerful voices would drown mine out with so much as a sigh. All I could do was look up from the middle of the trio of titanesses, Gina’s and Jess’s stark white socks forming a strong contrast to the flesh-toned stockings Fulda still wore from the previous night. Each of them looked down at me, the unbroken stare of their blue eyes making me feel unusually small self-conscious. Jessica’s preference to watch me in silence while the other two acted out their planned banter particularly made me feel uneasy, as though she were simply waiting for the perfect time to strike.
Gina finally broke the silence. “If that’s what you two want, sure.” Quicker than I could believe she squatted down, her knees almost bumping into Fulda’s shins, and peered over her thighs at me. She set her hand on the carpet, fingers poised like pincers to pluck me up, but hesitated momentarily. “Um, do you mind if I call him my boyfriend?”
Fulda chuckled, a deep belly laugh that ran through my spine. “Sure, I guess. He’s yours, so you can call him whatever you want. He likes to be reminded how small he is, so be sure to work that in pretty often too.”
The fingers clamped against my sides, and Gina effortlessly hoisted me up with her mammoth hand. She held me in front of her face, carefully inspecting me with one tremendous eye. In doing so she flipped me every which way, turning me upside down and around, as if she hadn’t been eyeing me carefully for months. “So, that whole thing we just did, he liked that?” she asked.
“Huh. Yeah, I guess so,” Fulda replied. She stayed there a few more moments while Gina continued looking me over. “I’m going to bring his house over real quick, I’m sure you two will get along great. And if he gets rambunctious don’t hesitate to lay down the law, I think he likes that, too.” With those last few lies she departed, leaving me at the mercy of her sisters.
Gina stood, sliding backwards to avoid hitting her head on the doorframe. She eyed me hungrily, still absorbing everything Fulda had just told her, whether it was true or not. “So that’s why you’re so small!” she boomed, blowing my hair back with her voice. “It turns out you just really like it. And I know you want to be smaller, but we’ll get to that. For now I want you to understand how tiny you are to me normally.” The only saving grace of this whole thing was that Fulda had for the moment convinced her to let me live, and I suspect that would soon prove to be a curse that extended my nightmare.
Fulda quickly returned just as she had promised. In her left hand she carried the house I had spent so much time in, gripping it solidly by the roof with her fingers creeping down the walls. Seeing how easily she held my entire house reinforced how small I was, and presumably how small I was going to be until Gina got bored and crushed me. She set it down on Gina’s desk and briefly explained how it worked. “He really likes it when I pull the roof off and look down into it,” she concluded, yet another… well I actually did find that pretty hot. Then Fulda left again, closing the door behind her.
“That’s a pretty neat house you have there, tiny. It’s perfectly sized for a bug like you, and you can never hide from me in it.” Gina turned and started walking away from it. “But you’re not going home just yet, I want to have some fun with my new boy toy.” She winked and lowered me to the floor, setting me down in front of her. While she squared up with me, placing her hands on her hips and staring down at me with a smirk like the giantess she was, my blood went cold. Her foot lifted and slowly approached, quickly bringing me under its shadow.
My nightmare had just begun.