“Now then, seeing as how you’re so suddenly so, ahem, willing to atone for your behaviour, I think we can both make some progress, you and I. Don’t you think?”

Harry, now on his knees upon the soft plain of Miss Blaine’s hands, could only continue to look up at the scheming behemoth before him, trying to find the tiniest shred of hope that this was truly the road to retribution. Hopeless as he knew the situation inevitably was, he found it surprisingly easy to cling onto the idea that his bargaining had delivered him from the jaws of fate, and that if he could just survive whatever Miss Blaine was scheming to do to him, he may be able to get out of his desperate situation relatively unharmed, if certainly scarred. Even in what was to them all the darkest of times, he chose to resolve to cling to desperate hope rather than succumb to fear, depression and despair, as he thought his other friends (excluding Caleb, who was acting in his opinion at that moment markedly insane) were inevitably resorting to.

Not that clinging to hope did Ralph much good, he bleakly reminded himself. That said, his hope was to escape his fate, rather than co-operate with the instigator of it to perhaps avoid it. This is the right thing to do. This is the right thing to do.

“Y-yes, miss. Anything, anything for you.”

She smirked at his sudden terror-fuelled co-operation, ostensibly gleeful at her ability to break him to her will so utterly. “Yes, progress. Progress with which we can help each other, though in two separate areas.” In a swift motion, she plucked Harry’s tiny body off of her hand, startling him profusely as she pinched him by his sides and lowered him to chest level, in front of her mountainous bosom. “Look at my body. Would you describe it as ‘healthy’?”

Harry knew the game she was playing, and he knew she had trapped him in a horrible catch-22. However, he considered it far better to play it safe.

“Yes… yes, miss. Beautiful.”

Her tone in response was quizzical. “Oh? That’s odd. People always seemed to tell me rather the opposite. Often quite rudely.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Am I to assume your bias is because you’re distracted by the sight directly in front of you, or just because I literally have you in my hands right now?”

Much as he tried to elicit a response back, Harry only managed a few stutters and apologetic-sounding noises. In truth, it was a mix of both, though almost certainly more the latter. The goddess’s voice grew stern, and the vice-grip on him tightened, causing him to yelp in pain. “Don’t lie to me, Harry. Tell me what you really think. You had no problem with it before.”

Wincing in pain, he struggled to note his uncomfortableness, but Miss Blaine’s grip did not relent. He decided to continue to play along, but pick his words carefully, so as to navigate the minefield he knew he had to enter as best he could. “I suppose…you are a tad…..”

“Yes? Yes?” She shook him slightly, causing him ever more consternation as the impatient jiggling rattled his tiny body.

“….A tad… ow, ow… plump. Not fat, by any means…but plump. But that’s not a bad thing! Not at all! Ahhh…”

“I see. Still too much of a coward to tell me the whole truth of your opinion, but at least you’re not entirely spineless.” Her grip eased, and she set him back down on her palm, letting him collapse onto its soft, warm surface. “Yes, as you put it so tamely, I might be considered on the plump side. Personally, I’ve never thought that a bad thing, but I suppose some people just aren’t so forgiving. Not all of us can be, or for that matter want to be, star athletes.” Glaring at his collapsed form, she jogged her hand slightly, and he flew slightly into the air before landing with a light thud on the thankfully forgiving skin. Understanding the message, he immediately collected himself and stared back up at her titanic face.

“So… wh-where do I fit into all of this?”

She smiled at him, in a way that could almost have been construed as benignly. “Well, I figured that since we both have two problems regarding my figure, we could help each other figure them out.”

Through his nervousness, confusion as to what her plan was grew further. “And how exactly… do we do that?”

Miss Blaine laughed softly, revelling in the information she was about to reveal. “A good question. Well… I need to lose some weight… and you need to stop being so narrow-minded about fitness, or more acutely lack of it. As such, I figured the best way to do both… was to take you on at what you do best. “She paused, to let her subtle reveal sink in and watch his tiny eyes widen as confusion gave way to disbelief and then terror. She grinned again, blood still flecking the grisly visage. “Y-you want…t-t-to have… a race?”

“That’s the deal, my tiny fitness trainer. I want you to prove to me that all your training you do means something in the long run. And I may get more fit in the process, as well. It’s win-win!”

Both Harry and everyone else on the table knew that Miss Blaine had just dropped a death sentence on him. At his size, there was no way he could possibly outpace his gargantuan philosophy teacher-she knew that as well as he did, and they did. There was no point arguing with her, pleading with her- such would just delay the inevitable, or at worst accelerate its arrival. Yet, plead he did.

“But… but… that’s IMPOSSIBLE! I-I can’t ever possibly win that sort of race! I’m… I’m… I…”

Miss Blaine cut him off, briskly, her trap within a trap now fully sealed around him. “Why the defeatist attitude? Surely, with all your athletic prowess, you could beat little, tubby old me. After all, aren’t you far more healthy and athletic than I can ever, will ever be?” She plucked him up again, bringing him up to eye level- he could practically feel her beady eyes drinking in the snivelling, grovelling mess she had made of him. “Have some faith in yourself. Where’s the Harry we all knew before? This miserable wreck is a shell of the arrogant athlete we all know you to be.” She shook his poor body again, clearly enjoying the level of mental and physical torture she was putting him under. “Get a grip. This is happening whether you’re ready or not.”

Slowly, her whole titanic body began to rotate sideways, as she maneuvered the giant swivel chair she was on to shift her continental form from facing the desk to facing the expanse of carpet. Even after a little while at their new size, it was still mind-boggling for the three miniature students on the desk to watch the behemoth moving, in a slow, deliberate, and one might even say graceful way from their tiny perspectives. It was a sight to behold, and none of them thought they would ever truly get used to seeing it.

Of course, mused Caleb, continuing to watch the movement of the monolithic teacher, we won’t need to, considering the way we’re going.

For Harry, the experience was much different. Moving at such high speeds through the air brought back the familiar feeling of nausea he knew from his first encounter with the colossal tormentress. He could only clench his eyes shut as they moved further, both to try and keep the rushing air out of his eyes and to provide some respite from staring at Miss Blaine’s billboard of a face, which seemed to dominate his vision whenever he opened them. Eventually, he felt himself losing altitude, until finally he felt the warm, grooved fingertips holding him release their grip and he fell a short distance to the ground below. The carpet, while old and musty-smelling, was still somewhat pliable, and he was able to pick himself up and find he hadn’t sustained any bruises from the unceremonious drop.

The world he was now in was, as so many locales seemed to be at his miniscule size, an alien one. Even in his miserable state, he had to wonder somewhat at the landscape he had been dropped into. Before him the carpet stretched out seemingly endlessly, a massive blue ocean of short fibres that in almost all directions spread to the walls and the door on the horizon. He was in a canyon between the monolithic desk and the wall, in the shadow of the colossal furniture looking out onto the plain of blue. Inevitably, his gaze was drawn back to the huge, green door, which was the exit out of the room and potentially this horrible, horrible situation entirely. Looking closely, he could see the space between the door and the carpet was, while narrow, plausibly wide enough for him to crawl, even potentially run under. However hopeless and impossible his escape may have seemed, a small, desperate part of him still noted that to himself before a colossal sound behind him indicated his competitor was clearing her cavernous throat, and thus wanting to garner his attention.

What was behind him was arguably the most spectacular, and yet terrifying, sight of them all. From his position on the floor, Miss Blaine now looked more like a goddess than ever, sat on a throne that could rival a mountain for its size. Directly in front of him, even her open-top shoes dwarfed him; indeed, Harry figured that even her littlest toe would give him a run for his money at this size. As they somewhat impatiently tapped on the ground, possibly for effect as much as it was impatience, he could see the sheer area her massive soles could potentially cover, the sheer size and power of her monolithic, deity-esque form evident in them. Her legs extended upwards high into the sky, thicker than any tree and higher than any skyscraper, before capping off at her dome-like knees and disappearing. Her smiling face could have been lost in cloud, so far off from him did it seem, even when she was bending over slightly to look at him and at the same time cast him in her great shadow. This was his competition, he thought to himself, this continent of a woman whose very toes could obliterate him utterly without so much as a second thought. If ever his hopes seemed most impossible, it was then, as he took in the sheer awesome size of the philosophy teacher in her swivel throne from his minute perspective, a tiny mite in an ocean of carpet. Even her voice, so all-encompassing and omnipresent before her face and even on the desk, seemed somewhat distant as she laid out the rules for this, what would probably be his final race and indeed his final few minutes.

“Your goal is simple. If you can get to the door, you win. Your point is made. I will, of course, be trying to stop you. I’m sure you can figure out what happens if I do. The same goes for if I reach the door first, though I will take my time, and I will give you a sizeable head start, because I’m such a good sportswoman, even though you’re clearly much more athletic than me.” She smirked, revelling in the wave of irony she had been riding since she had begun to toy with him. “Simple enough, right?” She paused melodramatically, knowing she wouldn’t hear any response he made, and then continued nonetheless. “Good. Then I’ll give you a countdown. “5……4…..”

Despite it all, Harry leaned down, and got into his starting position, trembling. He knew he was fucked, whether he won this sham of a race or he didn’t. One way or another, this scheming, revenge-lusting woman was going to murder him, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it. He knew his chances of escape were nigh on impossible- poor, dead Ralph had proved that running from a giantess was a pointless and foolish exercise. All he could do was feel miserable and despairing as the deific voice continued to count down the seconds to his doom, and think about his last desperate and pointless run for his life, as his friends watched in despair and horror.

The death knell came far too quickly.

“1…..GO!”

--

High up on their vantage point on the desk, Caleb, Quentin and Jack leaned over the formidable precipice to watch the main act of the sadistic drama unfold. Harry was little more than a speck to them, deep in the vast canyon, sprinting through the prarie of carpet like a panicked ant. His progress, though they were certain he was running as fast as his legs and the terrain would allow him, looked almost leisurely compared to the huge size of the world around him, including his intently watching behemoth of a competitor. As he ran, a larger scene began to occur behind him, drawing their attention; almost silently, Miss Blaine was slipping off her shoes, revealing her nylon-clad feet to the three stunned onlookers. Poor Harry had barely just gotten out of the space between the desk and the wall before the giantess, eyes practically glistening with lustful excitement, announced her entry into the race.

“Fe, fi, fo, fum!

I smell the sweat of a tiny one!

Be he fat, or be he thin….

…my belly he’ll digest within!”

The creaking of the chair in protest pierced the air as the monolithic body rose out of its throne, soaring higher and higher until eventually Miss Blaine, stood at her full height, towered over even the minute students craning their necks to look up at her in awe. Her mouth was split asunder in an ecstatic and thoroughly disturbing beam.

“Here I come…”

--

The pace Harry was keeping, even in his terror-fuelled adrenaline, was fast becoming too exhausting to be tenable for much longer. The carpet, while looking similar to an endless grassland, was anything but like running through grass. The thickness of the carpet fibres was just light enough for his feet to sink between them, but dense enough to make it effort to pull out again. The effect made his sprint like running through snow or sand, and already he could feel his legs complaining as he heard Miss Blaine, with all pomp and circumstance, announce she was about to join the doomed ‘race’. He refused to look behind him when the chair’s protests announced her standing up, knowing the sheer, daunting sight of her at full height from the floor would render him paralysed in terror and incomprehension. Instead, he kept running, keeping his streaming eyes locked on the massive, forest-green door that would be his potential salvation. He was pushing himself to his limits as an athlete, throwing everything his healthy engine of a body could at preserving the last shred of hope for survival.

THUD!

The first step the titaness took was, surprisingly, not nearly as terrifying as he’d feared it would have been. He’d pictured the result as something not unlike the cliché stomping they’d used for the T-Rex in Jurassic Park- a stomp so loud it echoed like an explosion, and shook seemingky the entire world. The reality was better; the pliable carpet fibres, lack of hard surface like a shoe sole on the monstrous foot, and the surprisingly delicate stepping by Miss Blaine created a dull sounding, yet still loud and somewhat echoing thud as perspective thousands upon thousands of tons of skin, flesh and nylon made contact with and pressed its massive weight onto the ground. Dull as it was, the step was close, enough to create an earthquake that made Harry stumble in his now exhausting sprint. He was panting hard, but he pushed himself forward again against the screaming protests of his heart and lungs- he didn’t need to look to know that the voracious behemoth was already hot on his tail.

--

It was obvious she was toying with him, that much was blatant to the miserable watchers on the desk. If she’d wanted to, Miss Blaine could have snuffed out Harry’s existence with her foot in one mere stride. The step she took was, by her perspective, small; not even half a step. Yet, she had already made at least three-quarters of the progress Harry had, and as she raised her foot again they could see that she was in prime position to begin torturing her exhausted, tiny prey. Much as the fact that Miss Blaine was so many thousands if not millions of times bigger than them made the fact that Harry’s chances of survival were zero was not lost on them, they only grew more disheartened and miserable nonetheless at the scene of their friend’s fatal plight.

--

THUD!

As if out of nowhere, Harry’s view of the door was suddenly cut off by a wall of skin, covered in a mesh of fabric that even at his size was made up of fibres too small to see. He’d thought the game was finally up when he’d seen the gargantuan shadow of her foot pass over him, getting larger by the moment as it descended, but clearly Miss Blaine was intent on prolonging his suffering. Suddenly having to slow to avoid crashing into the warm, slightly sweaty wall of flesh, he immediately sprinted off in the direction of her mighty toes so as not to lose too much speed. He knew there was no hope of climbing it, and stopping was essentially suicide- that much his panicked, exhausted mind could process. Eventually, the nylon barrier began to lessen in its imposing height, ending at the huge prominitory of her biggest toe, before he was past it, running past her threatening digits towards the sight of the door again. However, he knew as soon as the shadow sailed past him effortlessly again that there was no way the massive feet were going to allow him to reach the door.

THUD!!

This time, Miss Blaine’s foot came down more aggressively, creating a tremor so powerful and so close to Harry that he was thrown upwards and forwards into the air, crashing headfirst into the nylon. He slid down the warm, damp material, able now to smell the musky, stale scent of Miss Blaine’s sweat all around him, the dampness transferring onto his own naked body and making him instinctively shiver as he crumpled onto the ground before the titanic arch.

Exhausted, streaming with tears and by this stage in quite some pain both from his running and short flight, Harry knew it was over. Still, however, he made one last desperate push, picking himself up and moving into a quickly faltering sprint towards her toes, hoping to perform the same manoeuvre as before. Miss Blaine was able to counter him quickly, swivelling her right foot around on the ball of its heel to meet her other foot in a right angle to wall Harry in. Through blurred eyes, the doomed athlete watched the translucent fabric-coated foot flew through the sky to meet the toes of its partner, cutting off his escape. To truly finish him off, the cruel giantess brought the sole of her foot down hard on the ground, sending his pathetically flailing form down to the ground for the last time.

“Awww, is someone giving up already?” Miss Blaine pouted, though Harry was unable to see her face, merely the two mammoth pillars of her legs, stretching up into the darkness inside her blouse high up in the sky. Her laughing tormented his addled, exhausted mind. “Well, guess if you want to forfeit, it means I win. Who figured I could beat the legendary school athlete?”

As she gloated, he noticed her right foot, the one that had just ended any hope of his survival, was becoming restless, the sole raising up off the ground to hang ominously over the carpet. Something told him he knew what was coming next, and suddenly he wasn’t sure which end for him would truly be worse.

“Now, I heard that when you get beaten by a girl, it’s customary to give them a foot massage,” Miss Blaine trilled, eager both in her victory and her chance to finally come to the climax of her game and end the little bug once and for all. “Think you could do that for me, little guy? My feet do ache after all that exercise…I’m not that athletic, after all.”

Her giggling was accompanied by the arrival of her right foot, the sole now ominously hanging over his prone body. Looking up at it, Harry considered one final act of desperation, to roll away and to safety, but then thought better of it. It was over the moment he was shrunk, and all his desperation to survive had merely been a game for his malevolent teacher’s enjoyment. There was no point.

Then, the foot was on him, the warm, damp, rubbery yet somewhat soft flesh of her sole pressing down on him and trapping him underneath a mountain of warm flesh and slick nylon. Immediately, the air around him began to heat up from the close space and the heat emanating from the colossus herself, making the stale, fetid smell all the more oppressive. Though he knew she was only exerting the lightest pressure on him, he felt the tons of flesh move him violently, rolling him up and the little arch in between her sole and her largest and second largest toe. Even down on the floor, far away from her mouth and surrounded by tons upon tons of skin and flesh, he heard her expressions of pleasure.

“Oh yeah, right there… right between my toes… perfect, just perfect…”

The nylon rubbed against him, damp as it was from the rank excrement that had accumulated on it, until her felt utterly covered in a slimy sheen of Miss Blaine’s foot sweat. Eventually, he was rolled right under her actual sole, and he found himself with his face buried in a smothering cushion of warm, saturated flesh and fabric.

“Man, you’re as bad a masseuse as you are an athlete. Although, perhaps the blame’s on me. Maybe I’m not applying enough pressure…”

The pressure began to mount, and the tiny athlete felt his body begin to be compressed under countless tons of titaness body. His lungs had begun to burn from lack of oxygen, and he knew his body wouldn’t last under sustained addition of pressure- it was just a question of whether he suffocated, or was crushed first. He almost felt acceptance as it mounted, strangely; after all his begging, pleading and misery, he almost felt content with how he was about to die, even after his humiliation.

At least it’ll be quick. One blinding moment of pain, and then I’ll be with Ralph. That’s got to be better than slowly digesting alive in her stomach, hasn’t it?

He didn’t answer himself. In the next moment, his mind was filled with only screams- and had he not been compressed under a smothering mountain of Miss Blaine’s foot, the same screams would have pierced the room.

CRACK! SNAP! CRACK!

In an instant, several of his ribs broke, his arms shattered, his legs snapped like twigs and his spine was damaged beyond any repair.

All of that was nothing, however, when the broken student felt the pressure lift off of his body, and the harsh light of the room filled his eyes again. When the blinding pain that seared across his entire body failed to cease, he began to scream and bawl like a dying animal.

“Ohh, that didn’t sound healthy,” came the voice from above, barely registered by the crippled heap on the floor. “Guess I was just a bit too much weight for him.”

He didn’t see her titanic form bending over to pick him up, but he did register the gargantuan pads of her fingers pinching up his leg and slowly taking him back up into the air again. When he did finally open his eyes again, he found himself before her gargantuan face again, his vision hazy and coming in and out of focus as she dangled him upside down before her, inspecting him like a broken toy. In a last act of cruelty to him, she had even denied him a quick death, in the hopes of festering upon him one final humiliation. Her expression feigned seriousness, but her eyes twinkled with a satisfied, psychopathic sparkle that would haunt Harry to his rapidly approaching grave.

“Yep, as I thought. Broken beyond repair,” Miss Blaine declared, dismissively. “Useless. Can’t be an athlete, can’t be a masseuse, and isn’t even tough enough to withstand a little pressure.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’d think for someone who was so confident about their body, that it wouldn’t be so…useless.”  Shaking her head, she began to raise him up above it, as she had what seemed like an aeon ago, when her terrible game of cat-and-mouse with him had begun. Looking down, he saw her smiling again; she had been waiting for this since she had plucked him up, he knew, and now as he dangled there crippled, sobbing, and dying, he knew the wait and torture had made the prospect of sending him down her gullet to oblivion all the sweeter for her.

“The only thing you’re good for now… is to be a little meal for me. Though I doubt I’ll get more than a calorie out of you, if that. You can’t even be food without being incompetent at it.” She sighed, mocking discontent, her nasty breath washing past him as his vision finally began to go spotty. Still… can’t say I’m not eating healthily. I’d think you’d approve.” Grinning, she began to lower him slowly towards her face, finally about to consume her prey and end the grisly theater once and for all.

“Goodbye, Harry. I’m sure your pitiful nutrition will finally make you marginally useful.”

As his vision finally faded to black, the last sight he saw was her wide-open maw, engulfing him in its slimy, salivating confines like a final resting place.