Time slowly moves on, and the party seems to fade away, more and more people leave, heading out to after-parties at bars. Anna and I are exhausted from the noise, listlessly sitting around. Someone earlier dropped a bottle of water near us, the water splashing all over the floor. When the coast was clear, we run over and heartily drink our fill.
As people leave, Grace and a few friends stay behind. She steps in front of us and turns off the music. “Party’s over, y’all, g’night!”
Some stragglers head out, except for a few people. Anna and I walk toward the couch where Grace, the French-pedicured-footed friend, and another lady friend of her’s have crashed down on.
“Now that was a party! Shit, I’m beat.” Grace and her friends laugh a bunch, playfully pushing one another around. “Put something on the TV. Let’s go to sleep.”
The girls flip around Netflix a bit and settle on an old episode of the Office. As they watch the show and joke with each other about the events of the night, Anna and I look up at them, watching them slowly fall asleep in a drunken haze.
“Well, now’s the time. Let’s go!”
“Go where? To the girls? Jump into their ears so they can hear us? They’re up on the sofa. We can’t climb those wooden legs.”
“Yeah, I know. But that one girl in the flip flops has her foot on the rug.” Anna has a plan. “Let’s climb her leg and get their attention. I’ll figure this out.”
I think about maybe writing “HELP” in broken potato chips on the ground with an arrow pointed to us under the entertainment center, but Anna once again is headstrong. We take off to under the coffee table, straight to the flip flopped foot of Grace’s friend. Anna jumps up on the black shoe as I follow, and she runs to the towering big toe. The nail extends above us. She attempts to grab the ridges on the pale toe to climb up, but she quickly realizes it can’t be climbed.
“Shit, I can’t get up this smelly ass toe. How did you get up on my sister’s foot? We’re too tiny, I can’t get a hold.”
I don’t think it’s smelly at all. It definitely has the odor of a foot after a long day, but I don’t mind that at all. Hell, I like it. “I climbed up her pinky toenail. All the other toes were too big.”
Anna doesn’t respond and heads to the pinky toe. We have to head around the longer second toe of the massive girl, then back towards the tapering toes to the smallest digit. Her second toenail is very large (and beautifully shiny), the middle toenail is shorter but still long, the fourth toenail is small but still massive to us, and the pinky nail is bigger than normal, and set straight down to the base of the shoe. This is girl has longer toenails, due to the French pedicure and its growth. As we stand in front of it, Anna jumps on its smooth white surface, but she slides back down it. It’s like trying to climb a large car hood that is perpendicular to the ground.
“Dammit, it’s too big too!” she screams at me. Suddenly, the toes jerk into the air above us, stretching. “Fuck!”
The massive toes slam back to the flip flop we stand upon and push us both back off onto the rug. I land on my ass, but I’m fine. I run over to Anna a few inches away (normal sized inches), and she’s crying.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Anna says in between tears. I head behind her and give her a big hug. The giant toes of the random college girl sit in front of us like an unscalable mountain range, the foot and leg soaring high above us.
There’s a loud doorbell echoing through the apartment suddenly, taking the foot in front of us away.
“Party’s over!” one of the girls on the couch screams as the doorbell rings again.
“Fuck, I’ll get it.”
Grace’s two feet land a ways from us on the rug and continue to the front door.
“Hi, I’m Natalie from the USSPS. I know it’s late, but I think there was a package delivered here by accident.”
Anna jumps up. “That’s us, they know! What do we do?” She runs out from under the coffee table to the front door.
“No!” I jump up and this time catch her, tackling her to the ground before she does anything stupid again. “They finally know we’re here, we need to chill the fuck out so they can find us.”
“My sister Anna and her boyfriend were supposed to be sent to y’all tomorrow. What’s happening now?”
“There was a shipping mishap. We believe that maybe that package was sent here today,” the woman at the door responds.
“Shit, Grace, maybe it was the box I opened earlier, remember that shit? Oh man, that’s messed up.” One of the drunk girls on the couch appears to be the person that tore us out from our package earlier today.
Suddenly, two massive pale feet fall down near us from the couch above, ten long and untrimmed toenails sticking out. Anna falls back and yelps. We both fall back as the gigantic right foot stomps down next to us, the wrinkled heel rising away to the woman at the door.
“Yeah, I opened a strange package earlier. I thought it was something I had ordered from Amazon. But there was nothing in it.”
“Where’s the box?” Natalie asks. “That might be it.”
The two girls still on the couch rise and stumble past Anna and I. They all head into the kitchen where we assume the box we were delivered in was thrown away. Anna runs to them to see what they find, and I follow.
“We’re saved!” she says. “Thank Christ.”
“They still need to find us though. Where should we hide? Those gigantic woman are still walking around this apartment. Neither of us are safe until they find us.”
Anna pauses and thinks. “Maybe there’s a system for this kinda thing. I don’t know. We’ll see.”
From our vantage point under the coffee table, we can see the woman flipping over the garbage can, tons of empty beer cans flying out, then eventually finding the beer-soaked box, empty, of course.
“Where did you open the box?” Natalie asked.
“Over on the desk, in the front room.”
The four giantesses head back to the room we cower in to the desk where we were tossed from. From what we could see, they lean down close to desk to look for us.
“Tiny Anna, wheeeeeere are you?” Grace said while laughing. She was still drunk, as were the other two.
Natalie has a magnifying glass and I assume finds the opened capsule we should have been delivered in.
“They’re not in here. That’s a good and a bad sign. They survived, but they might not have survived your party.”
Grace laughs. “So my shrunken sister and her dumb boyfriend might be hiding somewhere in my apartment. Oh man, that’s nuts.”
“That’s not funny to me, my company could get sued for this fuckup,” Natalie responds.
“Well, it’s funny to me! Anna, c’mere, sister, let’s party!”
A drunk Grace stumbles around her apartment, laughing at our predicament. Natalie runs to her, grabbing her arm.
“Stop, please. We have a plan for this. I need you to leave your apartment tonight. We’ll provide you with a nice hotel for the evening. The finest. We need to find your sister and friend.”
Grace breaks from her grasp, the drunk giant stomping away. Her right foot crashes in front of us.
“Fee Fi Fo Fum, or fucking whatever, where is my tiny sister at? Hahahaha!”
“That dumb bitch, I’m gonna fuck her up!” Anna screams in frustration and runs to her sister’s foot. Luckily, as she nears it, the foot rises, her massive wrinkled sole flying up, and stomps down away from us.
“We’re not going anywhere. We’re too fucked up, we’ll help you look for them. Anna! Come hang out with your little sister! Little, haha! You’re the little one now, it looks like.” Grace continues to drunkenly stumble around the room. Her two friends are standing off in the kitchen, laughing at their friend.
Natalie attempts to reason with Grace again. “Okay, how about this? You ladies go to your bedroom, and we’ll look for them. Just go lay down. I’ll even order you some pizzas.”
“Pizza? Hell yeah,” one of the girls in the kitchen says. “Grace, let’s go. We can play with your tiny sister later. Wait, there’s a tiny guy too? That’s fucking hilarious. Find that little dude, he can sleep with me tonight.”
“How are you going to sleep with a tiny ant-sized man?” The other girl in the kitchen asks. “He’d drown in your pussy, you dumb slut.”
Laughter all around from the drunk woman, as Natalie tries to take control of the situation. “Please, ladies, this is serious business.”
“Pffbt, fine. G’night, lil Anna. See you soon! Ha!”
The three drunk friends stomp away through the kitchen to a back bedroom as Natalie has the front room to herself.
“Okay, it’s just me now. If you tiny people are still in this house, I’m going to set down on various surfaces in this apartment small pressure sensitive pads. If you can get onto one, it’ll glow bright red and beep, and I’ll be able to find you. So if you can hear me, watch out. I’m going to be walking around setting the pads everywhere.”
Natalie pulls a small bag from her purse. She removes a number of one inch wide circular white pads. She starts at the front door laying one on the floor. She continues around the apartment, setting one on the desk we were originally placed. She eventually heads to our current hiding spot under the coffee table. Her massive left foot lands near us. She’s wearing a black open-toed flat, her scrunched big and second toes shooting out, toenails painted a shiny black. Natalie places a pad on the couch and then another one on the coffee table above us. Her shoe rises away from us as she goes on with her work.
“When is she going to put one near us?” Anna bemoans. “We’re right here.”
Natalie’s long pale legs walk away from us to the kitchen. “Where’s the closest one on the floor? That’s the one we head for. I can only see that one by the front door. There’s got to be a closer one.” As I speak, she sets down a pad in the kitchen, not very far from us.
“There. That’s the one. Ready?”
Anna doesn’t hesitate. “Ready.”
We both sprint to it. The hardwood floor is dirty and sticky from the party earlier, from all the dirty shoes and spilt cocktails. We seem to be halfway there as I see Grace and her two friends bust into the kitchen.
“Where’s our pizzas, lady?” Grace drunkenly slurs. “We’re starving.”
Natalie is in the kitchen still setting down her pads and tries to stop the drunk giantesses. “They’re coming, I promise. Go back to your room, please!”
Anna and I need to make a decision. Run back, or test our luck and make it to that pad. If these tipsy girls are stumbling around the apartment right before we can be found, we’re gonna have some problems.
“Hey, let’s head back, no reason to…” but Anna is hell bent on getting on the pad. I pause a bit to scream at her to return to our safe place under the coffee table. “It’s fine, Natalie will find us soon!”
But it’s of no use. Anna never seems to take my advice. She’s still running full speed as Grace pushes aside Natalie and heads to the front room. Her bare left foot crashes down on the hardwood floor right in front of her sister. Anna falls backward, stunned by the foot knocking her over. Instead of running away and ducking down into a crack in the floorboards, Anna runs to the massive big toe of her little sister. She bashes her tiny fists against the enormous flesh wall of the toe. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but I’d imagine there’s a number of curse words. Of course, Grace feels nothing, and the foot flies away to the front door.
“I thought I heard the doorbell,” Grace says to Natalie, still in the kitchen.
Anna continues to sprint to the pad in the kitchen and actually hits it sooner than I’d think. The small white pad of whatever technology I don’t know turns red, then begins to give off a low beeping noise. We’re found.