Okay, I’m tiny and alone on the floor of a strange place. I need to be rational about this. I need to get a normal sized person’s attention, and then also, I should try to get not stepped on, now that I’m on the floor. All of my belongings I brought with me are sitting on the desk seemingly a million miles away, not that they would even help. Shit, except for maybe the water and snacks we had in our bags. That could easily be a problem soon, thirst and hunger and the such.

I hear a television click on above us. Grace appears to be relaxing on the couch to watch some shows or a movie. And Anna is on the coffee table way above me, hopefully not doing anything stupid. So I have (drumroll):

OPTION #1: Run and hide and hope some deus ex machina shit happens and I can find food and water and won’t be eaten by a Roomba and everything will be cool. Maybe I can make it to the kitchen and live off crumbs and hope USSPS figures out their mistake.

OPTION #2: Make my way back to the desk where all our luggage is and make my way up (some-fucking-how), and keep messing with my laptop and phone until they can connect to someone not as tiny as me.

OPTION #3: Run straight to Grace’s left foot and work my way under it, hoping she just crushes me and ends this nonsense.

OPTION #4: Get onto Grace’s foot and hope to eventually she’ll move it up onto the coffee table where I assume Anna is still alive. If she’s binge watching something, I’m sure she’ll move around and bring the foot near me onto the coffee table in front of her. I’ll reunite with Anna (she knows her sister better than me), and we’ll figure this shit out together.

#4 it is, I decide, so I start running to the massive foot flatly resting on the rug in front on me. I’m on the pinky toe side of the foot, luckily, because at my size, there’s no way I could jump up on the big toe of this woman, or, I assume, anyone. The sounds from the TV jump around from station to station, Grace busily searching for something to watch, so I luckily have time to figure how to do this.

Okay. I can jump up onto this girl’s pinky toenail, then run up that toe to the base of her foot toward her big toe, where there is bound to be an errant hair on the toe knuckle I can grab onto, everyone has them. Jesus, her foot is humongous, Her pinky toe alone is the bigger than a school bus, and the other toes resting next to it are breathtakingly large as well. Her big toe in the distance must be an inch tall, making its perfect nail sit around fifty feet from the floor, from my point of view. And I can barely describe the actual foot: the size of a cruise ship? An aircraft carrier? Fuck, I’m tiny.

I exhale and close my eyes. Go! I run to the gigantic foot in front of me and reach the pinky toenail of the girl. There’s a slight growth, white, my exact height, and I jump on it, past the white surface, onto the pink surface of a nail. I start to slide down, but kick my tiny feet up to reach the actual skin of the pinky toe. I make it up and run across the base of the girl’s foot toward the big toe. There’s a not-unpleasant smell being on her foot luckily; she must have showered recently. Looking up, I see her muscled leg. I think Anna had mentioned to me that Grace was a swimmer. I can tell.

I’m approaching her big toe but see no hairs anywhere. She must shave a lot, as many swimmers do, even her feet it seems. I need something to grab onto whenever Grace hopefully moves her foot to the coffee table. I could slide right back off her foot to the floor if I don’t find something. The younger girl’s foot’s skin is so smooth, as are her toenails. Except for one part. It’s going to be that the big toenail’s edge. It’s thickness must be only a fraction of an inch (as am I, I know), giving me a place to secure myself.

I move as fast as I can across the big toe and hit the cuticle. I hop onto the base of the girl’s gigantic unpainted toenail. I know I’m small right now, but man do I feel small standing here. The large nail is smooth as can be with a slight curve back toward the sides of her toes. As I stand on the white lunula, I realize this toenail has more square footage than Anna and I’s tiny apartment. We could have a party here.

“Hey, Anna, if we get married, can we have the reception on your little sister’s big toenail? Shrink everyone down, friends and family, there’s plenty of space. And if she doesn’t trim it for a couple of months, we could have more than enough space for a photobooth.”

Jesus, I’m an idiot, I need to keep moving. I head past the crescent lunula to the pinker nail bed and soon reach the white tip of the toenail. I appear to be the same height as the length of Grace’s toenail growth, 1/8th of an inch, untrimmed in the past week or so. I head to the edge and grab onto it, waiting for whenever, whenever she should lift this foot, randomly moving around while watching TV and put this foot on the coffee table above. I look to the left and see the four other toes on this foot, sometimes rising and falling, just randomly twitching, unaware that a tiny little guy is watching them, hoping to be saved soon. I’m laying down on the nail, my head extended past it, with both arms tightly holding on.

I glance up while patiently holding onto the toenail edge, but I can’t see the TV (blocked by the coffee table), or Grace’s face. I can only see her legs. But then, it happens. Her left foot that I am on rises up, and the front of her sole touches the edge of the coffee table, her toes and I sitting on the edge of the coffee table. Still holding on tight, I realize now’s my chance, and I let go and fall, bumping off the front of her big toe. I land just fine, once again, my size saving me. I’ve fallen on my back and stare up at the five massive digits of Grace’s left foot in front of me, the nails of each toe touching down on the surface I’m on. The big toe rises, showing me the ridged base, blocking out the light that comes from the open windows of the apartment, as the long second toe moves closer to me. It’s much smaller but just as threatening toenail landing to my right. If that big toe slams down right now, that’s the end of me. I jump up and run in the opposite direction, seeing Grace’s phone nearby, and hopefully Anna nearby as well.

Heading to the giant cell phone, I don’t see Anna. I don’t but can’t hear her either with the nearby TV blasting some reality show I don’t know. As I reach the phone, Grace’s giant thumb crashes down in front of me and lifts the phone up in the air. She brings the phone to her face, still completely ignorant of our situation. I’m on the table between her left foot, still on the edge where I fell off, and her right leg fully extended, her sole rising high above me, toes occasionally scrunching. But now with the phone gone, I see Anna, just sitting there, hands to her face. I run to her.

“Anna, Anna, are you okay?”

“Who cares, we’re screwed,” she responds.

“No we’re not. I have a plan.” I’m lying to her. But I need her back in the game.

“No you don’t.”

Fuck. She called my bluff.

There’s a loud piercing sound. It’s Grace’s phone.

She answers. “Hey. Yeah, the party is here tonight. Bring whoever. Yeah, tons of booze and whatever. Cool, see you soon.”

So in a few hours, there’s going to be a bunch of drunk young college kids in this house. We need to hide, ASAP.

“Anna, let’s go, now!”

I grab her arm and lift her up. We run towards the TV, away from the college girl’s feet on the coffee table, and reach the edge.

“We need to jump. If we stay here, we’re going to be crushed by Solo cups full of booze. We’ll survive. It’s fine.”

Anna is still in a state of “Fuck All.” I don’t care, so I grab her arm, and jump down onto the rug below the coffee table. We both fall and fall and land on the rug of the living room of her little sister’s place. I jump up and pick up my stunned girlfriend, and drag her over the TV entertainment system, away from Grace.

“It’s survival right now. We can fucking do this.”

Anna sits down, now hopefully safe below the entertainment center, where no where will step on us. She stares down, but then rises up.

“Okay, let’s figure this shit out.”