David awoke the next morning after a full night’s rest feeling refreshed and prepared to tackle another day in his new managerial role at work. With a salary more than enough to cover the penny-rent of this cheap apartment he shared with Ariel, plus the fact he got to work side-by-side with his best friend Nina, it was easy to find motivation to sit up and hit the pavement. However, he was given pause this particular morning, as he looked to the end of his bed and found his younger sister standing there, clutching a thick-spined brown book to her chest.

            “Uh, Ariel?” he mumbled, clutching the covers around his body. “Ever hear of this thing called knocking on the door first before you come in?”

            “I don’t know. Have you heard of this thing called not being an asshole?”

            “Nice one. How long did you stay up last night thinking of that one?” David chuckled, rolling his eyes as he laid his head back on the pillow. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, now, sis.”

            “Mmm. Actually, I think I’ll stay. I have a couple things I want to get straight with you, before you take it upon yourself to say anything else you’re going to regret later.”

            “Regret? Ariel, I don’t regret anything I’ve said, especially to you, and I don’t intend to start now.”
            “I sort of hoped you’d say that. It’s going to make this a lot funnier now.”

            “Make what a lot f-” David began, at last annoyed enough to prop himself up again and directly address his oddball of a sister. However, his words stopped in his throat when he caught sight of Ariel, now with the leather tome opened up and spread across her forearms to a tattered page in the center. Her lips were moving rapidly as she concentrated intently on the scrolled lines upon the paper.

            “If you’re going for the record in how early in the morning you can weird me out, congrats, you’ve succeeded,” David said. “Now, for the seriously last time, Ariel, get the hell out of my r-”

            A beam of light ripped a crystalline path through the living room, as though a flash grenade had been set off above David’s bed. The young man sputtered, throwing up his hands as he struggled to crawl up to his feet, and that was the very moment he realized what he was looking at.

            The bedroom geometry stretched exponentially in all directions as though through a kaleidoscope, swelling in size to epic proportion; or, more accurately, he and his pajamas had simply shrunk down to the size of a small action figure. The second option was no less plausible but somehow all the scarier.

            Then over the cushy horizon of the bed, David saw her. His redheaded demon-eyed little sister, grinning the widest grin he’d ever witnessed on her stupidly adorable face. From here, still dressed in her after-work pink top and short shorts, her body itself looked to be the size of their entire apartment building. Ariel was an absolute leviathan.

            “HOLY FUCK!” David scrambled backward. The mushy wall of his pillow blocked his path too far in that direction, leaving him with few options aside from leaping off the harrowing height of the mattress, or moving in the direction of his leering sister with her magic book.

            “I wouldn’t try and jump off the bed if I were you, David,” Ariel said sharply, concealing a crooked half-smile. “I haven’t figured out every good trick in this book yet, so until I find the spell about how to make you tougher so I can play harder with your dumb little body, you’ll just have to try and take it easy.”

            “This is impossible…” he crumbled to his knees. David stared at his hands in direct comparison to the billowing runway of his bedsheets in disbelief. He couldn’t have been any taller than four inches right now. Maybe less. He wondered if slapping himself in the face would make any difference. If not return reality to its more comforting stasis, then at least wake him from this creepy nightmare.

            “Ooh, it’s very possible. You’re always making a big deal about how I never did anything with my college degree, right?” Ariel snarked. She took one last glance at the open page of the book and then set it down on the floor. “Well, let’s just say I’ve been doing an awful lot of learning in the last eight hours. So why don’t you come here, so I can teach you a lesson or two?” With that, Ariel hopped onto the bed and began to crawl forward, hand over hand.

            Even though he knew there was no hope of escape, David still did his best. He was almost flung skyward by the relative weight of his sister’s body moon-bouncing him on the mattress. Recovered, he dove beneath the nearest upturned fold of the bedsheets and burrowed through the soft darkness.

            He didn’t make it far before giant, log-shaped forms were pressing and groping into the mattress from above. She’d cornered him. Meeting a wall which he presumed to be his sister’s hand, the young man squirmed helplessly as Ariel’s palm wrapped around him beneath the sheets. Iron-strength fingers coiled without mercy around his hips, pinning his arms to his sides as he was drawn out to open air again.

            “Nice try. But in case you haven’t noticed, I’m the bigger sibling here now,” Ariel explained as she held her brother up to her billboard-sized face. “And the more you put up a fight, the more ticked off I’m gonna get. The more ticked off I get, well… let’s just say it doesn’t go well for you.”

            David, imprisoned in the powerful grip of his giant sister’s fist, watched breathlessly. The redhead leaned her back against the headboard of her brother’s mattress. Then, crossing her legs, she used her free hand to peel back the elastic mouth of her purple socks. One by one, the cottony footwear was tossed off the bed, leaving Ariel’s naked peds to rest in the mess of sheets.

            Putting aside his instinctive need to yell at his sister for putting her dirty bare feet on his personal bedsheets, so close to where his head lay, David realized he had larger problems now. Much larger problems. He wrinkled his nose at the leathery, ghostly smell from the previous night still emanating off the girl’s foot skin; she obviously hadn’t showered.

            “Something the matter, David?” Ariel asked innocently as she delicately folded her feet up upon her crisscrossed calves in a yoga-like pose of zen stillness. Her meaty toes flicked and rubbed. Long, possessive fingers brandished around the young man’s frail body. “Did we get off on the wrong… foot?”

            Still unable to fully process any of the madness that was currently unfolding in his own room, David winced, flashing his sister a look of complete revulsion.

            “I’ll take that as a yes,” Ariel giggled. “So maybe you ought to try making friends again?” She dipped her hand down, drawing David forcibly into the wriggling embrace of her toes.

            Gasping in shallow surprise, David shielded his face a little too late. Without free hands to help deflect the onslaught, he was treated to a concussive meeting with Ariel’s thrashing, marshmallow-textured toes. The bulbed tip of each digit was larger than his head. Her skin was lightly moistened with night sweat, nothing horrendous, but the real crime of it was the smell.

            It was hard not to gag. The aroma was akin to shoving one’s face directly into a recently used jogging shoe and pulling the shoelaces tight around the neck. Though David had been unfortunate enough to accidentally sample the air whenever his sister saw fit to lay her work-ravaged feet up on the table like day-old meat, he’d never been in such close proximity. It was definitely in the top ten most disgusting things he’d ever smelled in his life.