When I came to everything was dark, with the only sound reaching me a steady, muffled pounding. A rhythmic swaying tossed me from side to side, throwing me between felt walls of my container. Whatever room I was in was small: each time I bounced off the walls I did not even slump all the way to the ground. It must be some kind of boat, I thought. That was the only way to account for the tight quarters and movement.
Abruptly everything stopped, followed by a pair of thuds from the top of my chamber. Suddenly it rushed violently upward, throwing me from my feet from the intense g-forces of the ascent. My assessment of the situation became worse. Not only was I on a boat, but I was in a shipping container that just got unloaded. The irony was not lost on me when the jolts from it setting down hit me, accompanied by the metallic clang from the loading dock floor.
The fixture was undone with a click and the lid of my shipping container was lifted away on a hinge. Instead of the ceiling of a sprawling warehouse or, as I had begun to fear, armed revolutionaries pointing guns, there was a gigantic face looming over me. Too shocked to scream I simply looked up at it, wondering how the hell I had gotten into this situation.
It was certainly not someone I recognized, but I had a lot of enemies. The face was decidedly young and feminine, not all that unpleasant to look at except for it being the size of a billboard. Orange freckles ran from one pale cheek to the other, crossing the bridge of her broad nose. Her brown eyes had dark rings around them, with light glinting off the narrow frames and glass lenses in front of them, and her pink, narrow lips were heavily chapped. One thin eyebrow had a vertical scar near the tip, and the other one had a ring running through it for symmetry. Black bangs spilled out from beneath a red beret, though she had done her best to tuck them back under.
“Good, you’re still alive,” she said. Her voice was like a clap of thunder, and the heat from her breath engulfed me. Her hand dove for me, and I was pinched between two long, slender fingers. She lifted me out of the container I had been trapped in, sending my legs flopping from the force of being violently lifted, then set me down on the metal folding chair. “I would hate to have lost our leverage so early.”
She rested her enormous hands on the seat and pushed up, popping the metal when it lost and regained its shape. My captor was staggeringly tall, though quite thin for how she towered over me. Tight black breeches clung to her monolithic legs, and an unbuttoned olive-green jacket was draped over her a shirt with narrow blue and white stripes. There were no identifying marks on the jacket, but a shining brass pin in her beret told me she was not my friend.
She turned and stepped away from me, her black combat boots thudding on the pavement with enough force to rattle the metal floor I stood on. Her arm reached forward and grabbed a hand-held camcorder, then turned it on with the flick of a finger. “You have our demands, we have your CEO,” she boomed into the camera. “Wave hi to your board, Morris!” The camera tilted slightly down at me, and I gave a sheepish wave before it went back to her. “If you do not publicly announce and implement our demands he will be executed and another one of you taken.”
Her boots pounded concrete while she walked over to me, then she knelt. “And in case you think this video is edited, permit me a demonstration.” The giantess’s fingers swooped in, jabbing me hard in the shoulder and staggering me back. She continued, slapping me from the other side with two more and knocking me over. Before I could stand she grabbed me by the legs and picked me up, letting me dangle for a second before tossing me in the air so that I flipped several times before landing hard on the metal set. After a quick laugh she said, “You have 48 hours,” and closed the camera with a click, then set it on the floor.
She stood and walked back to the front of the chair, then set her hands on her hips and stared down at me, a small smile tugging at her lips. “Well, Morris,” she rumbled, “there’s no way they’ll agree, so I hope you enjoy your time as the American Equality Front’s tiny captive.”
“What even are your demands?” I asked. They must have been submitted recently, since I had never seen anything like that.”
“Oh, nothing too outlandish,” she replied, as though she were speaking casually with a friend. “Fifteen-dollar minimum wage for employees, comprehensive health coverage, donation of 90 percent of revenue exceeding benefits to an approved list of charities, lobbying for a higher corporate tax rate, that sort of thing.”
I was aghast. If her face weren’t hundreds of feet above me I would laugh in it. “That’s absurd!” I shouted up at her. “The shareholders would never-“
She raised a boot and kicked the chair, showing me treads deep enough I could fit between them. The chair slid backwards with a screech and I fell forward, banging my head on the metal surface. “You think I give a fuck what your shareholders want?” she bellowed, causing me to clutch my ears. “They’re nothing but leeches who steal from the laborers who build your company!”
When I looked up again her face was looming over me, close enough that I could touch her nose. I could see every pore and minor imperfection in her skin, but she seemed unbothered by it. “This year alone two dozen of your employees died of preventable diseases and over a third of them had to get public assistance, don’t you think it’s time they got paid, too?” I stayed silent, knowing it was a rhetorical question.
“What did you do to me, anyway?” I asked once her question had lingered in the air a bit. “Last I remember I was about to sit down to dinner.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this,” she began with a smirk. “When we heard your company was funding research for devices to compress cargo for cheaper bulk shipping, with the implication of laying off thousands of drivers and passing the costs onto sub-contractors, we knew we just had to have one. It turns out anything inside something when it shrinks adjusts its size accordingly, resulting in… you.” She reached down and poked me again, jabbing me back with a fingertip the size of my chest. “We’re still learning how to use it, mind. You shouldn’t have been knocked unconscious by your house shrinking.”
I gulped. Apparently, I had given them the rope to hang me, as it were. “What about my family?” I asked.
“Trust me, they’re fine,” she answered, giving me another forceful shove. “They’ll have to find some way to cope without having a roof, of course. After I tore it off I crushed it in a show of force before I realized you had been knocked out. Once I had you in my glasses case though we grew them back.”
We were silent for a while. I no longer had any questions and her enormous mouth was so close that each word of it sounded like a small explosion. The whole time I hoped she would go away and leave me in peace, but she stayed there staring at me with her huge brown eyes. She looked immensely self-satisfied, as though just looking down at me was her goal.
Suddenly the swiped at me, engulfing my entire body with her fingers and curling them around me. Blood rushed from my head while her hand rushed me around, though I could not tell where in the darkness. It was a short trip, but the crushing pressure from her fist and the burst of g-forces made it extremely unpleasant.
When her fingers unwrapped, I was level with the bridge of her nose, her eyes turned inward to glare at me more. Her other hand descended, and with two fingers pinched around my collar she plucked me out of her palm. She let out a low, rumbling laugh while I dangled beneath her fingers. She batted me with her index finger to start me swinging like a pendulum and began laughing in earnest. “How does it feel, Morris?”
Perplexed and terrified, I stammered, “H-how does what feel?”
“Being so small and helpless, of course!” she clarified. “Here you are, tiny and at the mercy of someone totally indifferent to whether you live or die. You can’t run, you can’t hide, and you certainly can’t fight back. I can do anything I want to you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. So how’s it feel?” I could not muster an answer that would be anything other than repeating what she said. “Maybe like how people in this country feel every day so they can keep from starving to death? Thought so.”
She began lowering me back to the chair but dropped me the last few inches, sending me sprawling when I landed with a clang. With a sharp exhale she stood, taking a moment to loom over me again with the camera in her hand. “I want you to think about that before I get back tomorrow,” she boomed, “and you better hope I have good news for you. Something tells me I won’t though.”
Having said her piece she walked away, her tight pants straining with the shaking of her hips. With a heave she opened the panic room door and slipped through it, then drew it shut behind her with a clang. She locked it with a clack and I was left alone in the room, empty except for a shelf and the metal folding chair I stood on.
I walked to the edge of the chair and looked over. There was at least a hundred feet to the ground, and if I weren’t killed outright the cement would at least break my legs. Even if I did get off the chair, where would I go? She had sealed me in this room, and there was nowhere to hide. Dejected, I settled in for a long, sleepless night under fluorescent lights, confident my board would come through and release me in the morning.
The lock opened with a crash, startling me, and the enormous metal door swung inward. I had no idea how long it had been since the isolation distorted my sense of time, but it could have been the full day. My captor stepped in, her combat boots making dull thuds on the concrete as she approached, her expression pensive. She positioned herself in front of the chair, making me look up at her towering body, and placed her hands on her sides with a smirk.
“Your company doesn’t love you as much as you thought, Morris,” she declared, practically spitting my name. “We got their response back a few minutes ago. They categorically refused to meet any of our demands and said they were already looking for someone to replace you. I guess they really do value shareholders more than people!” She flashed me a wicked grin, and I began to back away.
“Aw, thank you so much for clearing space for me,” she chided. “I’ve been on my feet all day and need to get off my feet.” I looked up at her in shock. Was she really going to kill me over not getting what she wanted?
The gigantic woman began lowering herself down into the chair. I looked for anywhere to run, but the fit butt, cheeks cleft by her tight pants, held my attention. Her hands set down on the metal with fingers hanging over the side, popping the chair’s seat under her weight. The rear continued its descent, blocking out everything else and casting me in its shadow.
No matter how much I wanted to run I was stuck. Her ass hit my head, pushing me backward and knocking me over. It inexorably continued downward, and my body screamed when she finally sat down atop me. My ribs compressed and I had been rendered completely immobile from the immense weight engulfing my body. I tried to breathe but could not even manage that: there was no air beneath her butt to inhale even if my chest could expand.
Pressure built the longer she was on me, and I felt my bones creaking. She shifted back and everything gave way with a sudden flash of all-encompassing agony when my bones turned to powder and organs burst. Her ass crushed me, and with the last bit of consciousness I felt her wiggling it back and forth, making sure I was utterly smashed.
Tuyet stood when she was satisfied her captive had been either flattened or smothered and checked the chair. No sign of him aside from a wet, red splotch. She reached behind and felt a still-warm lump stuck to her butt. Carefully she peeled it off and, still pinching it, gave it a quick examination. It was him, all right. Mechanically she stuffed the tiny corpse into a spare glasses case and strode out to send evidence of the deed to his board, along with the implied threat that any of them could be next.