I was functionally blind inside the slimy, airtight walls of Li’s throat.  The heat from her body assailed me, and the only sound in my ears was her muscles’ churning as they forced me down.  Resisting was useless, and I tried to take comfort in the softness of the tissue around me.  Soon the only thing I felt would be chemical burns from her stomach acid, followed by an eternity of nothingness and oblivion.

A massive force slammed into Li’s body below me, and my trip to certain doom halted.  Shockwaves from the impact rocked everything around me, and a gust of air rushed past me.  The colossus containing me dropped with a thud, shaking me again, and the walls around me spasmed.  Irregular, hacking gusts of stale air slammed into me from the bottom, but her throat muscles held me tight.

Another hit blasted into Li from the other side, making her whole body quake.  A tremendous voice, distorted by the layers of flesh around me, shouted, “Spit him out!” and her throat muscles went in reverse.  Li tried to swallow again but a second blow interrupted her, and I was conveyed further from her stomach.  The body around me was panicking, trying to refill its lungs with air while clearing the airway.  Her throat hissed hoarsely, but there was no air to support her coughs.

A third blow shocked Li’s chest cavity, and I was pushed out of her esophagus and through her epiglottis to land on the back of her tongue.  Through her pristine teeth I saw a cupped palm nearly pressed against her lips, ready to catch whatever fell out.  A sputtering cough wracked her body, and the sudden rush of air lifted my miniscule body from where I rested.  In a flash I rocketed between Li’s teeth and out her lips to land on the soft, welcoming skin of the waiting palm.

Before I was even settled the world began to shift, but the hand’s incline was steeper than the walls of a teacup and held me solidly in place.  A moment later I was looking at a pair of ice blue eyes that stood out amid sand-colored skin, with dark eyebrows arched downward.  “Shit, dude, are you okay?” Fulda asked.  “Please tell me you’re okay.”  I moaned and moved my arms a little, the most I could manage at the time, and she relaxed.  “Good, you’re alive.”  It was weird, but she actually seemed concerned.

Fulda moved me to the side so she could look down at Li.  “And you!” she bellowed, her anger coming back.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?  I set you up with a smart, sweet, funny man, and you try to eat him?”  Li hiccupped in response.  “He may be tiny, but that’s no excuse.  If you need to eat someone so badly shrink someone else, don’t shove my fucking friend down your throat.”  Wheezing came from the floor as Li tried to say something but could not.

“I really should do something worse to you,” Fulda continued, “but I can’t even stand looking at you right now.  Get your head straight before you even think about talking to me again.”  The monument supporting me swayed and a loud click echoed through the air, followed by another one while she brought me back in front of her face.  Her eyes darted between me and the way in front of her, checking to make sure I was still with her.  When she was in the hallway Fulda called out, “And I’m not paying to fix your door!”

She took a few steps down the hall and stopped.  “Hey, you still with me?” Fulda asked softly.  “Say something, anything.”

I moaned as loudly as I could, but from her expectant eyes I could tell she wanted more.  “It hurts,” I finally managed, the crushing from Li’s throat still fresh all over my body.

“Hey, I know,” Fulda replied, and stroked me with a finger.  “Let me get you dried off and I’ll take you home.”  My view tilted while she bent over, and I heard her fumbling with something.  Several seconds later her other hand was back, this time pinching a large white tissue.  She carefully set it down on me, then gently dabbed Li’s saliva off my body with her fingertips.  Once she was satisfied, she wrapped the tissue around my body and lightly pinched me.

“Sorry about this, little guy,” she began, plucking me out of her palm, “but I can’t just walk down the street with you in my hand.”  I felt myself dropping though her fingers still held me securely, and moments later Fulda placed me on a soft floor, supported further by my tissue blanket.  A loud click came from above and the ground shuddered, then the swaying of Fulda’s gait resumed.

Between the gentle rocking inside Fulda’s clutch and the adrenaline from my near-death experience wearing off, I was suddenly very tired.  In moments I drifted off to sleep, curled up inside a tissue beside a tube of lipstick.

I have no idea how long I was out, but when I woke up sunlight was pouring through the windows.  The tissue had been replaced by a comforter heavy enough to pin me down, precisely pulled up to my chin, and I was on top of an enormous white pillow soft enough that even I made an indentation on it.  For a moment I thought I had finally been allowed to die, but the dull pain of being squeezed over my whole body came back and spoiled that illusion.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but the first thing I noticed was Fulda’s towering body sitting on the mattress, her feet hanging down to the floor.  She was wearing the same dress as last night and her auburn hair was tousled.  Some of her makeup had run and her tired blue eyes stared unwaveringly down at me despite the bags under them.  Her pink lips were pulled back in a tight grin while she watched over me, almost looking peaceful from this distance.

She must have noticed my eyes flutter open, since her lips parted into a wide, toothy smile.  “Hey there!” Fulda exclaimed.  “I was starting to think you’d sleep all day.”  I wrested my arms free from under the blanket and pressed my hands against its edge to push myself free, but Fulda quickly reached down and placed a finger lightly on my chest.  “No, save your energy.  If you want to go somewhere, let me pick you up.”

I set my arms down atop the comforter on either side of Fulda’s fingertip.  “How long was I out?” I croaked.  My voice was weak, but at least it was back.

“A little over sixteen hours,” Fulda answered, moving her finger away from me.  “You were sound asleep when I took you out of my bag, not even my stomping woke you up.  I probably could’ve sat on you and you’d have slept right through it.”  A beat passed, and she blushed.  “Oh, sorry if it’s too soon, that was…”

“No, it’s fine,” I assured her.  “It was funny.”  I looked around the unfamiliar room, my eyes passing from the closed closet door over the plateau of drawers and stopping on a set of bars loaded with enormous metal discs.  “Where am I?”

“You’re in my bed,” she replied quickly.  “Once I got you out of the tissue I brought you here and tucked you in, figured it was the least I could do.  I tried to sleep on the couch, but I couldn’t.  My legs hung too far over the side… and I was worried about you.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking back to her.  “For everything.  If you’d hesitated even a second I would’ve ended up as Li’s snack.”

“I am so, so sorry about that,” Fulda pleaded.  “I hope you can find it in you to forgive me.  If I had known she’d try something horrible like that I never would have let her meet you.  She agreed to all the conditions, and she knew that if I saw her reach for you it was over right then.  Guess I shouldn’t have been so trusting.”

“It’s… it’s done,” I responded.  “You cleaned up the mess, there’s not much else you can do now.  Before she tried to swallow me, Li told me some interesting things though.”

Fulda audibly gulped.  She must have known I’d find out some day, and the time had finally come.  “L-like what?” she stammered.

“What your sorority did,” I answered.  “About your friends.  The parties.  You.  They acted just like she said they did when they killed shrunken people, they haven’t changed at all.  If they had a chance they would’ve crushed me, too.”

“I –“ Fulda began, but she stumbled over her words and I continued.

“And you could crush me at any time, just like you did all those others!  Isn’t that what you want?  Are you just waiting for your chance, maybe until you get bored with me again and can’t pawn me off on one of your sisters?”

“No I’m –“

“Just how long have you been shrinking people, anyway?”  A heavy silence filled the air.  “Well?”

Fulda let out a deep sigh before answering.  “Ten years.  I found the witchcraft book when I was fourteen and couldn’t help myself.  I was already tall, but I wanted more.  I wanted to be a giantess, but if I were a thousand feet tall they’d call the military on me, you know?  So I shrank people instead.”

She was trying to laugh it off, but I was on a righteous tear.  “What about when we were dating?” I began.  “Did you plan to shrink me from the start?  Were you going to crush me, too?”

“Yes… to both.”  Her voice was becoming heavier, as if each confession weighed her down more.  “I was going to date you for a few days, then take you up to my room where I’d shrink you and put you in my shoe.  On the day I was going to do it, we were on the stairs and I was practically dragging you up, but my sisters came home early.”  She paused as she recalled the memory.  “They saw me with you and got so excited that I was dating someone so short.  At first I kept you around because it was funny, especially when they cornered and looked down at you, but after a while I really did like you.  I wasn’t going to shrink you at all, but then I lost my temper at prom and… well you know what happened.”

I don’t know why I expected anything different.  However, I had already gotten one answer I didn’t like, so I might as well press on.  “How many deaths are you responsible for?”  She was quiet, but I insisted.  “How many, Fulda?”

“Personally, or…?”

“You and your whole damn sorority.”

“I don’t know.  Hundreds, easily.  I never wanted to hurt anyone, you have to believe me, but once I had that first guy down at my feet, begging me for mercy, I felt such a rush of power and I had to have more.  When I felt him crunch under my shoe it got so much more intense and I needed more.  At college I wanted to stop, but being able to shrink and eliminate people made it so much easier to get by.  Then I formed the sorority and a feedback loop started, with us egging each other on, trying to find new ways to do it, trying to get the most in one night… it got out of hand, I admit.  Since then, though, I’ve been a lot better about it.”

“Oh yeah?” I challenged her.  “When was the last time you shrank someone, then?  Did you let them go?”

“Two weeks ago.”  I was appalled that she kept doing it even with me around, but she kept talking.  “I didn’t plan on it, it just sort of happened!  There was a guy who wouldn’t leave me alone in the coffee shop, so I shrank him.  I couldn’t leave him tiny and didn’t want him to tell anyone, so I squeezed him between my thighs.  That was the first time I’d done it in months though, honest!”

“And what’s stopping you from crushing me?  A fit of boredom, maybe you miss the feeling, just decide I’m too annoying?”

“I would never crush you!”  Tears were welling in her eyes.  I must have hit a nerve.

“Why not?” I pressed.  “I’m already tiny, so the job’s half done, and that was the only reason you started dating me in the first place, right?  So let’s cut right do it, just pick me up and squeeze!”

“I don’t believe this!” Fulda boomed, making a single tear trail down her cheek.  “After all I’ve done for you and you think I’m going to smash you still?  If it weren’t for me Li would’ve swallowed you whole last night!  You want me to take you back and see if she’ll still do it?  Because I’m sure she’d be glad to!”

“You’re responsible for six years of my life I wouldn’t wish on anyone!” I countered.  “I was going to go to college, make something of myself, but you made me tiny and gave me to your sister!  You could’ve come back at any time and gotten me, but I guess it was too funny watching from a distance!”

“I did come back for you!” she shot back.  “I thought you would escape at some point, but you never did!  So I rescued you, took you into my home, gave you a place to stay, and this is the thanks I get?  I ought to take you to visit, see if she would do everything for you that I’ve done!”

“Go ahead, you didn’t have any problem the first time, so I don’t see why you wouldn’t again!”

“Because I love you, you little idiot!”  We both looked at each other in stunned silence, unmoving.  Her words hung heavily in the air even though I was not sure I had heard her right.

“I love you,” Fulda repeated tenderly.  “I didn’t realize it until you were gone, and by then it was too late.  I thought if I set you up with one of my friends I could be happy for you two, but none of them got it, they just thought you were some random tiny person.  Sometime around my junior year I realized the only reason I kept shrinking my boyfriends was to try and recreate the magic I had with you, but it was never the same.  They all resented me for it and tried to run, and I guess they were right to.  You, though… you were different.  You stayed.”

“It’s because I liked looking up at you,” I confessed.  “You were so big and strong, even before you shrank me, and I felt it even more once you were a giantess.  Turns out you were right all along: I do like really tall women, and the taller the better.  I want a woman to really tower over me, and like being bug-sized in comparison.  But only if that woman is you.”

“And I like that you’re small enough to fit in the palm of my hand,” Fulda purred.  “That you look up at my toes and stand on my stomach.  It makes me feel so powerful I don’t need anything else.”  She halted for a moment.  “Even so, I have been trying to make you your old size daily, because you deserve to have your life back.  Every time it doesn’t work I’m disappointed, but a little relieved, too.  It means we’re stuck together.”

“So I really am stuck like this?”

“I’ve tried everything I know and you’re still the same size,” Fulda answered.  “But it doesn’t have to be the end of the world.  Just being taller than someone doesn’t do it for me, and no one stays with me for long after I shrink them.  We’ve both seen what happens when you meet other women, too.  But together… I’m your giantess, and you’re my tiny man.  We’re the only two people in the whole world for each other.”

I balked at the notion.  She had just admitted to being the most prolific serial killer in history, and then said she loves me?  Not only that, but I fit the only criteria she had for selecting a victim.  Then again, she had also taken me out of the worst situations of my life, but only after putting me in them to begin with.  “I don’t know,” I said finally.  “I’ve been through a lot, and I’ve only had three dates in the past six years.”

“In that case,” Fulda began, back at her normal, overpoweringly confident self, “I’d like to set you up on another date.”

I cringed, then caught on.  “Does she have red hair, blue eyes, and stand about five hundred feet tall?”

“How’d you know?” she replied coyly.  “And this time I’ve known her my whole life.  She’s made some mistakes, done a lot of things she’s not proud of, but she’s been trying to do better as of late.  Interested?”

“Yeah, I’ll give it a shot,” I said.  “When can we meet?”

“She needs a bit of time to get ready, but it shouldn’t be too long.  She didn’t sleep very well and had a long night.”  Fulda reached down, stretching a hand over me, with thumb and forefinger poised to grab me.  They settled down on either side, then she very carefully, as though I were made of porcelain, slid me out from beneath the covers.  Then she stood, moving ponderously slow on her way out of the room.

Fulda held me steady as a rock in her hand, taking short, smooth steps that were barely audible from her soles padding on the ground.  It took several minutes until we were in front of my miniature house, normally just a few steps outside her door.  She gradually bent her knees, perfectly in control of her body, until she could squat no further, then cautiously lowered her hand and gently set me on the hard wood floor.

Once she let go of me Fulda rocketed back to her titanic height and looked down at me, smiling.  I was only too happy to return her gaze, standing as close as I could to her stockinged toe to gaze up at her.  “She’ll be by in a few minutes to pick you up,” she declared, winking.  “Don’t bother waiting outside, she’ll let herself in.  And she wants this to be casual, so feel free to dress down.”  After another wink her foot sailed away, hitting me with a gust of air as it went, and she turned to go back into her room, the ground quaking in her wake.

I watched her for as long as I could, but when she shut the door I could barely even see the soles of her feet through the crack at the bottom.  With a shake of my head I broke myself out of the trance and dashed into my small home.  This might be the one date that really mattered, and I was not going to mess it up.