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I woke up with an absolutely pounding headache, still behind the driver’s seat of my car with the keys in my pocket.  Serves me right for not making sure my friend had enough places to sleep before I got hammered, I guess.  Still, it beat sleeping on the floor, and there’s no way I was going to drive drunk.  The way I was last night there’s no way I could have made it home.

 

With a groan I put my keys into the ignition and started the car, dreading the drive home.  It was only about fifteen minutes, but with this hangover it was going to seem like an hour or two.  Luckily, it seemed that the sun was blocked out by clouds so I would be able to see without squinting.  I put the car in gear and checked my blind spot, making sure no one was coming before pulling out of where I had parked on the side of the street.

 

Across the street, instead of the neighbor’s house but even larger, I saw a woman’s high heeled shoe.  The pillar under the heel was at least a hundred feet tall, probably more, and the triangle of fabric in the front was twice as wide as my car.  Up the slope from that an unfastened strip of fabric dangled loose, an enormous buckle at the end with its probe hanging downward.  Beside it was most likely the other of its pair, lying on its side, sole toward me.  Its sole was black like the rest of it, and at this distance perfectly smooth.

 

Not wanting to jump to conclusions I look back to where my friend’s house would be and spot nothing but bare space, just a flat white surface on the horizon.  Everything between that was in dark shadow, moreso than it would be on a normal cloudy day, so I glanced upward.  A dark blue floral pattern formed the sky as far as I could tell, with two thick wooden slats on either side of the edge of my vision.  If I didn’t know better I’d say this was a bed, and I was on the ground beside it.

 

No doubt my friends were playing a “hilarious” prank on me, teasing me about my height again.  I rolled down my window to tear off the cover they had put up but my hand grasped at empty air, while a strong perfume came through the open window.  Quickly I pulled my hand back in and put the window back up, pinching my nose while I felt around for my phone.  Nowhere to be found.  Damn, must have left it inside when I came outside to crash.

 

Still sure that this is an elaborate prank I let off the brake and ease my foot onto the accelerator, propelling the car forward.  The road looked like a single wood plank, wide enough to fit four cars side by side comfortably.  Speed bumps were placed at regular intervals while I drove forward, with my tires dipping into them briefly before coming back out.  My wheels felt as though they weren’t getting the same amount of traction as they normally were, like the road was incredibly slick now as though it had frozen over.  Every now and then I passed by another car parked along the side, all of them fairly nice but unoccupied.

 

The ground shook as though an earthquake happened, causing me to slam the brakes.  A second later, as soon as the initial one dissipated, another one washed under my vehicle, bucking it up and down before a third one came on.  In the ten years I lived here I had never felt the earth so much as twitch, let alone quake: it was one of the reasons I had moved here in the first place.  I eased the car forward again, suspecting my hangover was blowing things out of proportion.

 

Another quake rattled my car’s frame and I slammed on the brakes.  Around the corner in front of me a house-sized shoe slammed into the ground, the apparent source of all of these earthquakes.  The other one came along right after, setting down half a mile closer to me than the previous one did.  These shoes looked similar to the ones that had replaced the house but were dark blue, and looked to be made of suede.  The feet they were wrapped around had black nylons drawn tight around them, with what would otherwise be a slender leg forming a massive pillar to the sky, thicker than any column I had ever seen before from my current position.

 

“What in the…” rumbled from the mountainous figure who came into view.  The attire so far made me assume it was a woman, but the voice’s distortion made it impossible to tell for sure.  I looked up further to confirm, wincing through my hangover, but only got as far as the bottom of a bright red coat before my view was blocked by a smooth black surface.  A quake followed right after when the shoe’s heel set down, and I realized I was directly under the toe.

 

I jerked the wheel to swerve out of the way, but short of teleporting there was no way I could avoid this.  My car slammed into the shoe sole, crumpling the engine compartment and shattering the windshield.  The airbag deployed and seatbelt stopped tight, holding my body in place and keeping me from smashing my face into the steering wheel.  Though I was dazed there was no mistaking the predicament I was in as my car’s frame conformed to the impact of her shoe, buckling under it as if it were made of tinfoil.

 

Sluggishly I undid the seatbelt and tried to open the door, fighting with the airbag as I did so.  The car creaked under the enormous shoe that had stopped it, and the door refused to budge.  It seemed that the frame was warped enough to keep it firmly in place, at least solidly enough that I would need much more leverage to move it.  Ripping steel tore at my ears again when she pressed her foot down, compacting the car even more and bumping it into my head.  A jagged edge slashed the airbag, deflating it and allowing me to crawl beneath the steering column.

 

Metal shrieked as she ground her foot down some more, compressing my vehicle into a nearly flat disc.  The constant scratching inside my ears briefly abated, but before I could breathe a sigh of relief an explosion rang out, centered right above me.  Her shoe stomping down flattened the rest of my car, leaving a space just barely large enough for me where I had been hiding.  I kicked at the door one last time, focusing both feet on the same spot, and to my relief the entire panel popped off and flew outward, whatever had been holding it shut destroyed by the woman’s massive foot.

 

Her shadow receded and I scrambled for hole where the door had been, but before I could get free it was occupied by a bulbous, peach-colored wall.  A sudden rush of motion nearly forced all the booze and pizza from last night out of my stomach, the only thing keeping it in place the bone-warping g-forces pushing me into the floorboard.  Just as suddenly I stopped, throwing me into the ruined console that had been scattered around me by the woman’s imperious stomping before I dropped back to the floor with a new, sharp pain in the back of my head.

 

“Damn, I would’ve gotten thirty grand at least for that one,” the voice rumbled, this time much louder.  With the amplified volume it was much easier to detect a feminine tinge to the voice, but how this woman became so terrifyingly massive remained a mystery to me, as well as how I ended up in her room.  I recognized everyone at the party last night, unless I blacked out and she ended up taking me home.

 

The bulging wall blocking me in moved, revealing a broad plane spanning several hundred feet outside the door of my demolished car.  Desperately I wiggled to get out from my tiny, intact compartment before she finished the job of totally cubing it.  “What made it start driving on its own though?” she pondered aloud, causing my insides to jump.  “That’s never happened before.”

 

A sudden jolt aided my efforts to escape and I spilled out onto the wide open space, pitted with broad trenches in several spaces.  “Huh, there’s the culprit.”  The voice buffeted me, its strong winds pushing me backward after a dark green eye locked onto me.  “Looks like someone was inside the car when I shrank it.  Bad news for you, tiny person!”  Metal cracked loudly as her fingertip smashed into the remains of my vehicle, flicking it against the far wall of her room.  “You cost me a lot of money with that stunt.”  The finger turned and pointed at me, prone in what could only be her palm.  “You got an explanation?”

 

“Well, uh, I, uh, you- um.”  I fumbled for words, but couldn’t form a coherent sentence.  Whether it was the lingering hangover, completely bizarre situation I was in, abject fear, or possibility that this was a dream, there was no way I could explain this to anyone.  If anyone knew what was going on here, wouldn’t it be her?  “How did my car wind up on your floor?” I finally squeaked.

 

“Because I stole it, duh,” she replied, harshly enough that flecks of spittle rained down around me like water balloons.  “I could’ve sold it within the week for a hefty profit too, until you crashed it into my foot.  Damn thing’s totaled now, and I bet you scuffed my shoe, too.”  The green eye centered on me narrowed.  “It’s too bad no one ever taught you the dangers of drunk driving.  Later today they’ll find your smashed car on a river bank, no sign of you except for some blood smeared on the inside.  A tragic, totally preventable accident.”

 

“What?  But I – oh.”  Before I could move her finger jolted forward, the whorls of her fingerprint eclipsing my view of her all-encompassing eye.  Her fingertip held me firmly in the center of her palm while I futilely struggled against its immense weight.  With a light prod she flattened me beneath her finger, reducing my body to a tiny red smear.  Surreptitiously she licked me off and smacked her lips, then went to retrieve the car and cover up her deeds.

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